ibm as400 model 9406-270

[aleb...@gmail.com]

I'm a fan of the mainframe world, I've always played with a mainframe emulated by Hercules, yesterday I had the opportunity to buy a used as400, I got all the cables and etc.
Now I need to know how to access the mainframe terminal...

This is the inputs that the as400 have:
pic1: https://imgur.com/cy3WAHo
pic2: https://imgur.com/j5TvLta
pic3: https://imgur.com/NaMuGfK

[Jonathan Bailey]

Well to start the name of this machine - 270 - is a minefield. I would guess this was an iseries when new. I think 9406 just means a certain box size in a vertical configuration - but I'm just an RPG programmer so don't take my word on any of this. I would keep the word mainframe to yourself though.

It looks like you have a twinax connector on the 2746. We used to have a hosepipe like cable from there on our 520 to a twinax 'brick' with 8 connectors. From there cable to the 5250 terminal acting as the console. All the users have lan attached 5250 sessions etc. We now use a lan port for the console. Looks like you have one of those on the 2838. I think the 3rd alternative for the console, a serial terminsl of some sort ended support at os 7.1. That might have plugged into the socket next to J11. The card above the 2746 looks like our modem/WAN. The modem is now defunct, as we use internet support & I have no idea what the WAN is for. We have 2 extra sockets like that on the 520 and no others in the building.

If you look at the front panel you will see from the Operations console manuals from the IBM website you need to select option 2 then manual. This enables options 65+21 to select the console type & IP address. Some of this may be unavailable on a 270.

BUT you should really already have this info from the seller. Along with any relevant userids & passwords. Not getting the passwords & checking you have enough equipment to connect at the time of purchase is a bit like buying a car without any keys. you should probably also have got some os install disks and maybe a more up to date backup tape with ptfs in place. I expect it has an unsupported OS installed with no access to fixes.

HTH
Jonathan

[Buck]

On Monday, December 4, 2017 at 10:43:35 AM UTC-5, aleb...@gmail.com wrote:
> I'm a fan of the mainframe world, I've always played with a mainframe emulated by Hercules, yesterday I had the opportunity to buy a used as400, I got all the cables and etc.
> Now I need to know how to access the mainframe terminal...

As Jonathan says, this system is not a mainframe. Mainframes used 3270 communications protocols; this uses 5250. Mainframes of that era used MVS or VM; this system used OS/400. Nothing you might have learnt on a mainframe will work here.

It IS very old, around 2000 or so.
That makes documentation hard to find.

The cards in the photos are:
2746 Twinaxial IOA
2838 100 Mbps Ethernet IOA

If you got all the cables, hook them all up. They mostly can only go in one place.
J11 - Remote power on
J14 - UPS communication
J15 SPCN 1
J16 SPCN 2

The Twinax adapter box has multiple twinaxial ports (circular, keyed, two holes) on it. That will get connected to the 2746. My memory is hazy, but I think you need an actual twinaxial device, not a PC running an emulation program. Set it to address 0, connect it to the twinax adapter with a twinaxial cable and that will be the system console. I could not find an English version, but here is a French poster of hooking up the twinax console: http://publibfp.dhe.ibm.com/epubs/pdf/a1115220.pdf

If you don't have a twinax cable and terminal (who does anymore?), you may be able to get in to the system by hooking up the ethernet and port scanning until you find the IP address. Then, as suggested in Server Fault, load a TN5250 emulator and try to connect. Like I said, my memory is hazy, and I'm not sure the machine will even boot up without an actual twinax console.

I myself never used Operations Console but that's another thing to look at:http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redbooks/pdfs/sg246226.pdf

When the box is powered up, look at the LCD display. What's in it? An 8 character thing like A600 4001? Or something like 01 B (which is normal).

The marketing information is summarised here: ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/eserver/iseries/marketing/pdf/v5r1/hw.pdf

Some hardware information can be found here (Hardware (Remove and Replace;
Part Locations and Listings): http://public.dhe.ibm.com/systems/power/docs/systemi/v5r2/en_US/y4459171.pdf

Another source of hardware information is the System Builder Redbook: http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/redp0542.html?Open

If you aren't personally familiar with the midrange systems, most of the terminology will be strange. I myself have shared pretty much everything I remember about that old thing. I wish you luck!

--buck

[Grant Taylor]

On 12/06/2017 08:42 PM, Buck wrote:
> If you don't have a twinax cable and terminal (who does anymore?), you may
> be able to get in to the system by hooking up the ethernet and port scanning
> until you find the IP address. Then, as suggested in Server Fault, load a
> TN5250 emulator and try to connect. Like I said, my memory is hazy, and I'm
> not sure the machine will even boot up without an actual twinax console.

Having fought this battle on other equipment, I'd suggest that you
connect the machine to (preferably) a hub with another machine running a
network sniffer. - You can frequently see early boot / initialization
traffic to give you some indication as to what network configuration the
machine might have. Hopefully enough so that you won't be stabbing in
the dark that is the IPv4 address space. (Assuming that the machine is
speaking IPv4.)



--
Grant. . . .
unix || die

[Alessandro Mazzini]

Pitching in.

A pc with an emulator card is a valid option. The issue is finding a card
for the right price
Then you can use Client Access or a proprietary software from the card maker

[Grant Taylor]

What emulator card are you referring to?

Twinax w/ 5250 client software? Wouldn't that also require
corresponding ports on the AS/400? (I don't know, maybe some of the
ports in the picture are exactly that.)

[Richard Belcher]

If you have at least one terminal to connect up and get tcp/ip working you have the the option fo TN5250J which will allow any PC to connect to the AS400.

[Buck]

The usual way people used these computers was to hook a twinax adapter box to the 2746. That adapter box had a series of twinaxial ports on it. Each port could support a daisy-chain of eight 5250 terminals/printers. These were what many people called 'dumb' terminals - keyboard and display and that's it.

At some point, IBM realised that PCs were useful adjuncts to their midrange computers, and they developed cards and the software to drive the cards which would allow a user to emulate a 5250 terminal. One of the benefits was the ability to upload and download files with the AS/400. These emulator cards have a twinax port on the back, and connect (via twinaxial cable) to the twinax adapter box. Not long after IBM sold emulation boards, other manufacturers did, too. Hercules was one.

It's important to understand that in this era, TCP/IP was optional. Some of those machines never had TCP/IP configured - twinax was built-in and required almost no configuration beyond creating the controller description. If that is the case with this particular 270, there won't be /any/ TCP/IP traffic to sniff.

When booting up (IBM call it IPL - Initial Program Load) all the initialisation traffic is directed to the twinax box on port zero, to address zero on that port - this is called the system console. It is there that one would normally see status messages and the like. It's possible to IPL a known good machine without a console, but if the operating system can't get started for some reason (disk failure, missing load/source, etc) then TCP/IP won't have started either, and correcting the situation is much harder. One might be able to diagnose the situation by looking at the LCD panel on the front. It will have either an 01 A (or B) or an 8 character SRC - System Reference Code.

If OP gets that far, searching the web for the SRC might give some clues about the current state of the hardware and software.
--buck