P/390s, was Re: [HECnet] MVS and DecNet

[Dave McGuire]

On 08/05/2012 10:42 AM, Gregg Levine wrote:
Dave that big guy is called the Integrated Server or IS/390 it was a
heap big RS/6000 system with the P/390 board plugged into it. Mike
Ross, (remember him?) has one and it is the size and weight of a good
sized person.

  Not quite.   The S/390 Integrated Server was a VERY large, VERY heavy
Pentium-based PC. (well, large and heavy "for a PC")   It contained a
P/390E board and was shipped pre-configured and ready to roll as a
full-blown mainframe with really crappy I/O performance.   It is a
deskside box that weighs about 350lbs.

  Incidentally, the Multiprise 3000 looks almost identical, but it is a
"real" mainframe.   It's an S/390 G5 in a small box with
partially-emulated I/O.   Its I/O performance is nowhere near a
full-blown S/390 G5, but it was sold at a fraction of the cost, and is
still a pretty good performer for light-duty production loads.   I have
one of these that I've not yet managed to get running; a lot of
unobtainable software is required to bring one up.   Operating systems
are (ahem) not a problem, but there's some MP3000-specific
initialization software that is tough to get, that I've not yet been
able to locate.

That's the second one I met in a very long time. I would say they were
not as popular as the crowd you described.

  That's because they were gigantic, overpriced PCs with P/390 cards
installed in them. ;)

                            -Dave

-- 
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA