Re: How to find out the main memory capacity -- MIDRANGE-L

I agree with what you are saying. You are indeed among the more helpfull on 
this list as, I , am more on the listening side.

And I apreciate this list very much. the reason for my  posting (And I regreat 
already having posted it) was that I have seen newbee posting in the past that 
received a much warmer response and were not originating from a third world 
contries. This gave me the impression (hopefully wrong) that some of us decided 
of the type of answer to give not only based on the question itself but also on 
the origin of the person asking the question.

But I agree completely that anybody looking for information should do some 
research (books, IBM web site, training ...) before asking this list and some 
times it is obvious thet the person did not.Then a simple reminder should be 
the appropriate response. Email is not the right tool for training.

Thanks 

Denis Robitaille
Directeur services technique TI
819 363 5187

SUPPORT
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>>> buck.calabro@xxxxxxxxxxxx 08/14/03 10:55am >>>
> How about if the question is legitimate (I mean by that not a newbe
> question) but comes from someone form one of these contries.
> Will you answer them?

Bonjour,  Denis!  Ça va?

I have answered many simple questions, newbies included.  After years of
doing it, I have finally realised that it is impossible to train someone via
email.  That is, if someone posts a very specific question, it is easy to
answer.  Probably because the question has so many details, it is easy to
see that the poster will understand the answer.

When someone posts a generic question like 'How do I read a file?' it is
much harder to answer.  Does the poster understand F specs?  CHAIN?  Error
handling?  Overrides?  DDM files?  Is it SQL, RPG or ODBC?  There are so
many fundamental requirements that need to be met before I can effectively
help that it is practically impossible to do so.  Who has the time to
literally write a textbook, one email at a time?

This is a real problem, I think.  I feel that most of the people here who
take the time to write answers and express opinions are sincere in their
desire to be helpful.  But it is just easier to answer a question with many
details than it is to answer a generic question with few details.  At that
point, the poster is losing time waiting for answers to trickle in, piece by
piece.  It would be better if the poster could either ask a question with
more details, or find help locally.  Either books or in person.

This particular question isn't easy to find an answer to in the IBM manuals.
But the iSeries programmer rarely cares about main memory capacity.  So a
better response to the question might have been to ask 'Why does it matter?
What business problem are you trying to answer?'  Then, we could hear more
details about the underlying problem and perhaps have been more helpful.

Cheers!
  --buck