Re: Advice for a mid-range noob looking to buy a system

Yes you will need drives and they do need to be the proper ones supported by IBM i. They are readily available on Ebay for perhaps $40 for 35GB 4326 Disks or $30 for 4319 25GB disks and you need one that big for the load source. You can use smaller disks like FC 4318 as well for more storage and those are like $20 on Ebay. I suggest you acquire the ones with the red background in the pictures. ;-) ;-) Hint Hint.

As for software yes you'll need to get that and it will run for 70 days before the temporary keys expire.

You will certainly want to have a good understanding of the console and have those pieces in place before you start or the install will be very difficult indeed.

I would also suggest looking at the battery on the planar (mother) board as it's probably dead. Available for 6 or 8 bucks but not a simple CR 2032 like most X86 machines use. It's a little bit bigger but still 3V Lithium. Without a good one it will always need to stop for date and time at IPL.

It's an old machine that can't run anything newer than i 7.1 which is long out of support already. Additionally it's the final generation of SCSI supported machines and likely has a twinax console to everything you'll learn in that area is out of date. Today disks are SAS or NVME or SAN based and console are LAN console or HMC Console. You CAN use those consoles with the POWER5 and for educational purposes I would suggest you do use LAN console and ACS to access it rather than Twinax which is long dead.

- DrF


On 2/14/2022 7:54 PM, Enzo D'Amato wrote:

Hello

I am new to mid-range systems, and I am looking at purchasing a mid-range system second hand for leaning and experimentation uses. I know that buying/setting up/installing a mid-range system is much more complicated than purchasing a standard x86 system. Because of this, I had a few questions about a system that I was interested in purchasing. I would appreciate any information or advice that you could give me. If I have posted this to the wrong mailing list, please let me know, and I will remove it and report it to the correct location.


I am looking at purchasing a model i5 520 unit, with an expansion bay. The asking price for this unit is $100, plus another $100 for shipping. Unfortunately, this unit has had its disks removed from it, meaning that I will have to track down and install the software myself. I wanted to ask if the system is compatible with standard disks, or if it will only take IBM certified disks. This archived copy of the i5 OS appears that it would be comparable with this machine, but I am not positive due to my lack of experience.? I also wanted to ask if I will need any software keys to get the machine operational. I am not concerned with what I would need to properly licence the machine, but what I would need to get the thing working at all.


I would very much appreciate any help and advice that you would be able to provide.


Thank you.