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

[Dave McGuire]

On 08/04/2012 09:00 PM, Jordi Guillaumes i Pons wrote:
There used to be a "mainframe in a card" thing... I think the name
was something like P/390. IIRC it was a MCA card with a 390 processor
which could be attached to a PS/2 personal computer.

  There still are. ;)   There are three types of P/390 cards.   The first
is a card for the Microchannel bus, and it has a relatively slow S/390
architecture processor on it, along with 32MB of RAM, expandable to 64MB
or 128MB.   The second P/390 has the same CPU, but is a PCI card, and it
comes standard with 128MB.   The third is the P/390E, which has a much
faster CPU, and has 256MB of RAM.   A 1GB version of this card exists but
is very rare.

  All three of these cards can be run in a PeeCee with OS/2 as its host
OS, or in an RS/6000 running AIX.   Software installed on the host
implement channel controller emulation as a set of daemons, and DASD is
emulated using container files on the drives of the host system.   The
container files used by Hercules are, not so coincidentally, identical
in format.

  These cards are referred to as "P/390" and "P/390E", and one of them
installed in a PC running OS/2 is called a "P/390", but when the same
card is installed in an RS/6000, it is referred to as an "R/390".

  I have a Microchannel R/390 system in an "unsupported" but functional
and rather nice configuration, in an RS/6000 model 397 running AIX v4.3.
The P/390 card runs either MVS (specifically OS/390 v2r10) or VM/ESA
v2r4, whatever I'm in the mood for.   I also have a P/390E card, but
haven't gotten around to building a host system for it yet.   The
(slower) Microchannel version is actually respectably quick, quite
usable.   The P/390E is noticeably faster (I've used someone else's) so
I'd like to get mine running at some point.

  If anyone comes across these cards and needs the software and
microcode to get them running, either for OS/2 or AIX, I have them.   I
can also help with getting them running; I've done a lot with them.

                            -Dave

-- 
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA