Re: I5 as400 salvaged 9406-525

As for getting open source stuff to run on these older systems, there's
stuff that already runs within an existing functional operating system
(like Python mentioned earlier), but no open source operating system to
load on bare metal. Unfortunately, much of the low-level hardware stuff
does not have publicly available documentation. And it is complex enough
that it would take forever to reverse-engineer it to get enough information
to port something like Linux to it.

I spent quite a bit of time with an old 9406-270 and a couple of older
machines, removing flash chips and disassembling firmware, just to see what
makes it tick, and how the IPL process from power-on to loading the first
bits of code from the CD-ROM...I learned just enough to make my head hurt.

It's too bad documentation isn't available, inside those old boxes is a
nice POWER CPU with a bunch of memory and a ton of PCI slots.

Jim

On Sun, Aug 26, 2018 at 9:38 PM Art Tostaine, Jr. <atostaine@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

I have one too. I finally unplugged it. I was powering it on once a month
to stop the licensing issue.

I’ll take it apart bit by bit and have some fun.

On Sun, Aug 26, 2018 at 9:30 AM John Yeung <gallium.arsenide@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

On Sun, Aug 26, 2018 at 9:23 AM Bradley Stone <bvstone@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I have a 515 with V5R4 loaded too that I just got a letter from IBM

that

it's no longer supported. I feel so bad it's just sitting there. I

wish I

could load the open source stuff on it or something. At the very

least I

could use it to run my website I guess.

You still can! V5R4 is enough to run iSeriesPython 2.7.

John Y.
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