As you can probably tell from the title of this post, I have recently started a project to build a 1988 IBM AS/400 B30 spec mini mainframe. As a novice with this, I am asking for your technical help.
First of all, if your interested, here is the video of the bits I've aquired so far (Please excuse the extra bits and initial messing around, but people have sent me parcels and asked me to talk about other things
) : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnyt5n229qkAs you can see in the video, I have so far aquired the case, a power distribution board and I have an IBM 9332 400mb hard drive (was not bought as part of this project, but hope to include it in it).
Obviously, this system is going to be a stand alone system, so as far as components are concerned, I am needing a cpu and tape drive (I have a vt220 serial terminal on it's way to talk to the cpu), and the largest problem of all, the OS.
Ok, here are the questions :
1) Lets start with the cpu, although I've looked at IBM's system builders manual, they use their own codes in their so I cannot find the part numbers for either the cpu or tape drive. If anybody can help me with model numbers that would be suitable for this project, that would be useful
)2) With the tape drive, I've also been informed that you can use generic tape drives of the era to talk to this kind of set up and don't specifically need an IBM system, can you advise me on this as I am a complete novice.
3) With the hard drive, I believe I need about 1.2gb of storage. Can I use 9332's in this set up (I've been told they may be troublesome), or do I need another kind of storage solution (please advise).
4) And now for the largest problem.....the OS. I know that I will need os/400 for this, but is there a way to get a copy without sourcing from ibm (not a rich guy so no way I can afford it from them). I've also been told that I would need a copy specific to my hardware configuration. Is this true, and is there any way around this?
5) Ok, the other thing is, does anybody know of anywhere I can get the hardware for this without paying premium prices? If anybody knows, it would be a LOT of help
)I hope you've enjoyed my video and any help you can give me with any of the points above, or any other thing you can think of will be very much appreciated
)Steve