Re: Moving An AS/400 -- MIDRANGE-L

All,

Hi, 
I've been lurking this list for a few months and should introduce myself
as I jump in here with my experiences moving an AS/400 this past
weekend. 

I'm Kevin Layne and I've only recently become involved in AS/400s so I'm
riding the learning curve.
 Hard. 

I've been helping out at a business owned by a family member, mostly PC
type support, built them a webpage and have been doing their nightly
backup on their AS/400. This system runs just one legacy app and nothing
else and has been in place in one form or another for nine years.
Outside of upgrades every 18-24 months this machine has required very
little administration.  The business has grown and we have to upgrade
again soon. We are also adding a 170-e and planning on providing db
access to our clients over the internet. I'll be spending alot more time
with both these 400's as my father-in-law is getting long in the tooth
and wants to retire and I have a big interest anyway.

Today we have just completed a move of two miles. Friday afternoon our
twinax connected 9406 was backed up by us and then disconnected by our
IBM CE and wrapped in shrink-wrap. One of the girls in the office put a
sign on it saying "this costs more than your house" and the movers
rolled it into the truck on a dolly saturday morning. In the afternoon
he was there to hook it up to the cableing installed by the "cable guy".
After connecting, the AS400 came right up and checked out ok and the CE
left. Meanwhile I was hooking up some 15 PCs and about 25 terminals,
directing movers, moving boxes and listening to a steady stream of
complaints from users who came in to unpack their stuff and who went
into a kind of musical cubical frenzy moving phones and terminals from
one place to another in spite of having a floor plan and seats assigned
and agreed upon before the move.  Our phone and fax lines were mixed up
and we find out that we only got half the phone lines we needed. The PCs
and terminals were not connecting to the AS/400 and we were tired so...

Sunday we finally started getting our addressing sorted out and managed
to get all but one of the PCs and about 2/3 of our terminals up. Looked
like we had a couple of dead ports. Got fax and some phone. 

Today with users back to work, we brought in some help for the cableing
problems. Had terminals up and down throughtout the day as cables were
tested and rewired. The phone guys were out all day putting phones up
and down. Had users coming in and out all day complaining that their
terminals and phones were going down. We just told them to type and talk
faster. Whats this thing called? a hub? It had some funky wireing from
the original installation. One of the cables was connected such that it
had been sending data through the shielding without apparent problems
for the last nine years! Got one of the dead ports back and all but one
of the terminals working. 

Just as the tech finishes up his work everything goes dead! All the
terminals, the connected PCs and the AS/400. The powerline to the AS/400
(installed by the CE) had become disconnected at the machine. After
IPLing everything seems ok now.

and then there's tomorrow

I'd say back-up, make sure your cable guy is good! double check every
connection and don't be suprised if I'm posting questions to this
wonderful list in the future.

kevin
kal@stix.com
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