RE: Any free AS400 service to practice RPG other than PUB400 which seems to be closed?

The problem with these cheap machines are many.
1 - You have to check to see if the licenses come with the machine. If not, you probably cannot afford the OS and LPP's you want.
2 - Did they have all the LPP's you wanted? For example, SQL.
3 - They do not support the current version of the OS. If your goal is to learn new stuff you're toast. 6.1 doesn't support the current versions of Java out there. If you want to test connections to other websites you won't have any current ciphers which will allow you to do that.
4 - Noise, electricity consumption, cooling, possibly battery backup, not storing it in that damp spot in the basement that sometimes floods, all become your responsibility.
5 - Maintenance becomes your responsibility.
6 - Often the hardware learned from an obsolete machine is not transferable to a newer one. For example: Hey, I now know how to change a cache battery. So what, they don't use them any more.

So you have to decide if you're planning on making your bread and butter on the development side, or the admin side. If the development side then I believe that you really want something new and are probably better off using a service. If the admin side then maybe having your own machine has some benefits.


-----Original Message-----
From: Midrange-NonTech <midrange-nontech-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Yvan Janssens
Sent: Tuesday, May 14, 2019 4:13 AM
To: Non-Technical Discussion about the IBM i (AS/400 and iSeries) <midrange-nontech@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: Any free AS400 service to practice RPG other than PUB400 which seems to be closed?

A E4A can usually be found for $200-$400, especially if you give it some time on eBay. I found it very useful to have my "own" machine to learn and experiment on; it gives you a lot of experience with not just the application development side of things.

It also gives you space to mess up and start over (I tend to learn best by
doing) without affecting anyone else.

/y

On Tue, 14 May 2019 at 07:36, Farhan Qadri <farhanqadri@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Having been associated with IBM I for so long and nowadays looking for
opportunities, would appreciate any free resource to have some full
free rpg practiced with some SQL and stored procedures.

Thanks for the replies on the topic.

On Tue, May 14, 2019, 10:55 AM Yvan Janssens <ik@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

There are a few people around on this list and elsewhere that
sometimes

let

people have a profile on a hobby/non-production system. Do not
expect any guarantees on uptime etc though.

Depending on if you have any budget, Power6 E4As are getting really
cheap nowadays, and they're more than enough to learn/develop on.

/y

On Mon, 13 May 2019 at 18:49, Rob Berendt <rob@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Kind of a late reply I know...

This site is not free but it's less than many pay for phone or
cable TV service.
https://iinthecloud.com/idev-cloud/

-----Original Message-----
From: Midrange-NonTech
<midrange-nontech-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

On

Behalf Of Farhan Qadri
Sent: Thursday, April 25, 2019 6:22 AM
To: midrange-nontech@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Any free AS400 service to practice RPG other than PUB400
which seems to be closed?

Hi,

I asked the question to Jon Paris and he thinks that I should ask
on

this

forum for a current update.

Please let me know.

Thanks
Farhan
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