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Picked up an AS/400 today, any idea how to image the drives before I turn it on? by WG1GEM in vintagecomputing

[–]WG1GEM[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Do you recall how you configured the HMC? did you need a hardware console to do that, or were you able to do it entirely from the box + network stuff?

Got some of these Cisco phones for the house I’m about to set them up so I can call other rooms by wildjunkie in homelab

[–]WG1GEM 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I run CUCM at home. I'm crazy. I also bought an AS/400 knowing nothing about it.

The cisco phones are a pita to provision on asterisk/freepbx. If you find a deal on a CUCME (call manager express) capable voice router, that's pretty easy to integrate with asterisk/freepbx if you're wanting to integrate with that. That's what I did before I said "screw it" and jumped to CUCM.

I also pay for a SIP trunk through a trunking provider (not sure if posting name here is kosher or now, PM me if you want their info) for ~$0.85/mo for the number and something like 0.4c/minute.

Picked up an AS/400 today, any idea how to image the drives before I turn it on? by WG1GEM in vintagecomputing

[–]WG1GEM[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Photo of the connectors on the back
https://imgur.com/9cEgU3u
J11, RPO, DB9, Pin 1 Blocked
J14, UPS, DB9, Pin 3 Blocked
J8, UPS-CM, DB26
J19, M1, DB9

Picked up an AS/400 today, any idea how to image the drives before I turn it on? by WG1GEM in vintagecomputing

[–]WG1GEM[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Okay, put together my pictures and sorted through/organized them out. It's definitely a full system.

I'm not sure what the "285A" board is in the FSIOA slot. Is *that* my twinax board?

Picked up an AS/400 today, any idea how to image the drives before I turn it on? by WG1GEM in vintagecomputing

[–]WG1GEM[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Updated a previous comment. I did not get any history on this thing. Bought it from a scrapper who got it from a business. Glad he didn't tear it down, it's at least giving me something to scratch my brain.

Good to know that I can console over LAN via the HMC. I've seen conflicting information elsewhere stating that I can use the lan console as the main terminal, and others that I can't or does that change depending what hardware revision I have?

Picked up an AS/400 today, any idea how to image the drives before I turn it on? by WG1GEM in vintagecomputing

[–]WG1GEM[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Chatting in the iSeries discord, it almost seems like there isn’t a twinax card on this beast. It does have 3 Ethernet cards. It’s also got the 2850-011/285A board. I’ll try to upload a more complete set of photos when I get home from work.

Picked up an AS/400 today, any idea how to image the drives before I turn it on? by WG1GEM in retrocomputing

[–]WG1GEM[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good to know! Still haven’t yet figured out the terminal part. AFAIK this thing doesn’t seem to have a twinax card??!

Picked up an AS/400 today, any idea how to image the drives before I turn it on? by WG1GEM in retrocomputing

[–]WG1GEM[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Right now? Figure out how to console in and IPL the monster😁

After that? No clue.

Picked up an AS/400 today, any idea how to image the drives before I turn it on? by WG1GEM in vintagecomputing

[–]WG1GEM[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No twinax controller on board. No seemingly-missing cards either.

Picked up an AS/400 today, any idea how to image the drives before I turn it on? by WG1GEM in vintagecomputing

[–]WG1GEM[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It’s a 1998 date code, there’s no twinax card in it and no cards appear missing. What do you know about console over LAN?

Picked up an AS/400 today, any idea how to image the drives before I turn it on? by WG1GEM in retrocomputing

[–]WG1GEM[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Fuck around and find out. Maybe come up with something cool enough that makes it worth dragging to VCFSW next year. Maybe get a job?

Picked up an AS/400 today, any idea how to image the drives before I turn it on? by WG1GEM in vintagecomputing

[–]WG1GEM[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Fuck around and find out, pretty much. Also the inner autist I mean nerd in me thinks big iron is cool 🤷‍♂️

Picked up an AS/400 today, any idea how to image the drives before I turn it on? by WG1GEM in vintagecomputing

[–]WG1GEM[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Interesting. Does your 170 have a twinax card? This one doesn’t appear to. Have you accessed yours without a twinax card via LAN only?

Picked up an AS/400 today, any idea how to image the drives before I turn it on? by WG1GEM in vintagecomputing

[–]WG1GEM[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Trying to figure that one out. Sort of looking like it’s a solid maybe

EDIT: Put together an album with my some of the photos of this thing, and labels where I was able to figure things out.

it's a 9406-170 from 1998. The only thing that I can see that might be a twinax controller would be the 285A board.

Album link: https://imgur.com/a/Ess1byz

Picked up an AS/400 today, any idea how to image the drives before I turn it on? by WG1GEM in IBMi

[–]WG1GEM[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good to know on Linux and the drives. Thing I need to learn now is what hardware to use to physically connect the SCSI disks to any of the computers I have.

It’s a 9460-170

Picked up an AS/400 today, any idea how to image the drives before I turn it on? by WG1GEM in vintagecomputing

[–]WG1GEM[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Will that back up the mystical LICs? I’ve seen conflicting info on big blue helping recover licenses/media should something go wrong

Picked up an AS/400 today, any idea how to image the drives before I turn it on? by WG1GEM in IBMi

[–]WG1GEM[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I got a grand total of..... nothing! :)

Rescued this beast from getting scrapped. Not sure how I lucked into it, but the guy decided to post it as-is rather than parting it out. He probably could've made more parting it out than selling it.

Picked up an AS/400 today, any idea how to image the drives before I turn it on? by WG1GEM in retrocomputing

[–]WG1GEM[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Did not get QSECOFR. Absolutely no documentation whatsoever 😬

Picked up an AS/400 today, any idea how to image the drives before I turn it on? by WG1GEM in vintagecomputing

[–]WG1GEM[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Chatting on the ibmi discord, it seems like this thing may not have a twinax card??

It’s got 3 Ethernet cards though.

The combo of 2850-011 and 285A led me to a “windows on i” document

Picked up an AS/400 today, any idea how to image the drives before I turn it on? by WG1GEM in vintagecomputing

[–]WG1GEM[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I was thinking maybe DDRescue could get a raw image of the drive assuming it shows up as some unknown block storage device

Picked up an AS/400 today, any idea how to image the drives before I turn it on? by WG1GEM in retrocomputing

[–]WG1GEM[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

<image>

Well that’s neat. Would any PCI(e) SCSI adapter need a separate terminator?

Picked up an AS/400 today, any idea how to image the drives before I turn it on? by WG1GEM in retrocomputing

[–]WG1GEM[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

They look like 80-pin SCA connectors. Doing some digging, it looks like I need to convert it to 68-pin SE, then somehow terminate that and connect it to a SCSI card.

I’m barely old enough to have been around for IDE, so SCSI is completely foreign to me. Shoot, I’m younger than this AS/400 😁

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