Re: AS/400 heritage

Using the S/38 since 1981, there are many stories I can relate about the S/38,
AS/400, and iSeries.

Built Tough
In 1982 I travelled to baltimore, MD to install a new S/38, to replace an
obsolete mini computer. As luck would have it, the facility, an old warehouse,
was being remodeled. After the system was manhandled up four flights of stairs,
we found there was no air conditioning in the building. Due to schedule
conflicts, the plumbers had not run the lines for the Air Conditioning, and if
they could, the company that would connect the lines was unavailable.

With a deadline rapidly approaching, we cahnged into shorts and an undershirt 
and
set to work. This was not normal working attire, but our computer rooms were not
normally 130 F!!! The installation proceeded smoothly, the dealines were met, 
and
the system went into production. A week later, the air conditioning was finally
complete.

We did sweat this install a little, but it wasn't the S/38, but rather the heat.
The staff was so impressed, they treated us to a day at the races, the 
Preakness,
one of the three races that comprise the Triple Crown of horse racing.
..........

Who called IBM?
One afternoon, the phone rang. It was an IBM Customer Engineer. He inquired as 
to
when would be a good time to replace our failed disk drive. "What disk drive?", 
I
replied. We had no reports from the user community of any problems. Our AS/400
had had a drive failure, detected the failure, and called IBM service. The
Customer Engineer was dispatched before we even were aware of the problem. RAID
protection, free with the AS/400, had prevented the system from crashing. 
Service
Director, free with our service contract, had reported the problem.

The CE arrived on site, installed the drive without interuptting operations, and
an hour later the RAID protection was restored. What other system can do that,
other than the new iSeries?
.................

It just does Green Screen.
I am often asked why I continue to use the IBM AS/400 and iSeries systems. For
some reason, many believe they are strictly character based machines. Imagine 
the
suprised look when I explain that one of our systems captures of 250,000 images
every month. These images are then processed on Client PCs where clerks view the
images, perform their particular task, then the image is automatically passed to
the next step in the proces. This same system accepts requests from the web, and
is integrated with automated call distribution system, inbound/outbound faxing,
and also several mainframe systems. There has been literally no downtime in the
last two years that can be attributed to the system. The only green screen use 
on
the machine is for operators to do backups.

To keep this system from becoming lonely, we have a pair of 820 DSD systems
running Lotus Domino. We are replacing over 50 NT servers with two little boxes.
The systems are clustered, with replication and automatic failover for Notes 
mail
and critical applications. Coupled with an Automated Tape Library and BRMS, the
systems can run 24X7. Green screen access? Only if you don't want to use the
Notes client for server administration. Even our Job Scheduler is GUI...
...............

I guess the first step of dealing with addiction is recognizing you have a
problem. I admit it, I am addicted to the iSeries, but what is the problem? I
have a platform that can support Java, C++, Linux, AIX, COBOL, RPG. The database
mananger, communications support, backup&recovery and job scheduler are all
integrated. Industry leading reliability, service, and performance. And I can 
run
a program compiled 20 years ago on the newest hardware, without recompiling.

Bob Larkin
713-342-7384


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