Recently I’ve gotten a hold of an old IBM mid-range computer, an AS/400 150. This is an 1997 server very much aimed at businesses, pay-rolling, inventory management and such. It can be used as a multi user system, with users logging in via a terminal. The operating system it runs is OS/400 and that is also the only OS it can run, no Linux available for this system. Of course it comes with all the fun programming languages like COBOL and RPG, all the business classics.
It’s compatible with the IBM system/36, so any programs made for an 80’s S/36 machine run without problems on the AS/400 machines. It also looks very much 90s, though I personally like the cover at the back, hiding all ports.
Stories like these are always great reads. This is the kind of hardware I eventually want to collect and play around with once I have the space to do so.
Ah, the AS/400. My first job was programming these in the early 1990s using RPG/400 and CL/400 for the HR department of a UK high street bank. Quite an eye opener after writing BASIC programs on ZX Spectrums, QLs and BBC Micros!
I got all nostalgic reading this article and ordered an AS/400 book off eBay. 🙂
I never worked on an AS/400, but my first tech job was on IBM System 37 (IIRC). That’s big iron, we’re talking rooms full of equipment. MVS/Jes2/TSO, etc. Completely different animal than that of personal computers… I actually enjoyed that job (computer ops).
Yea, one of the things I (think) I would have liked was to have had a year or two working with an AS/400 in anger, trying to get something accomplished. It does have a completely different view of the world than the DEC/UNIX world I grew up in.