Re: 7028-6E1 (pSeries 610) and how to burn cd

G'day Tim,

Here's some meanderings and guerilla learning..

> Ahhh.. ok.. yeah.. thats what I was afraid of. I knew the AS/400 machines were
> different, but I kinda hoped in the back of my head IBM was lazy and just built
> the same machines as the rs/6000 line and installed different software on them.
> (like they do on IBM Virtual Tapes, for mainframes, they are actually bone
> stock rs/6000's running a crazy version of AIX).  It sounds like they are
> completely different internally.  That turns it into an entirely different ball
> of wax.  I could give you hints on where to start, but I'm not familiar at all
> with AS/400's, I've only seen them physically.  You would basically be starting
> a whole new port of NetBSD.

Yeah DEC did a similar thing with the old InfoServer machines. They were a 
stripped back CVAX (Might've been a mariah? someone correct me), ran a 
very hacked up VMS 5.x and later 6.x out of ROM and used to share CDROM 
drives out over DECnet/LAT.

Technically there's 3 generations of AS/400 much as I can tell. There's 
the original 48bit CISC machines. 64bit RS64 machines (Close tasmanian 
cousins of Power). Power/LPAR capable ones AS/400 aka iSeries. This all 
came after the original System/38 family as a compatible follow-on.

Also as far as "just built the same" goes they managed to elegantly dodge 
that bullet. I'm going to grossly over-simplify here but bear with me. Any 
executable image loaded within OS/400 (i5r3 in my case but I'll call it 
OS/400 to avoid confusion with apple/cisco products), anyway any 
executable image has two parts to it. One is a machine inspecific program 
compilation. Much the same way java code is partially compiled to a .class 
file. It's not designed for a processor to run (Although there is 
apparently an interpreter..no idea on this). This system inspecific code 
is called "TIMI". Okay. the second half is your system specific + headers. 
So if I understand it correctly, the first time you run your app it takes 
for ever to start.. because it is translating from TIMI -> what ever your 
machine's processor features are and it then runs natively. TIMI->Native 
code translation happens much as I can tell only once. I then move that 
library and objects to the other as/400 with a different cpu and it 
decides "Lo! you are not the same processor." which.. it isn't. So it 
rebuilds it. So, for giggles I've shoved a lib from a System/36 onto it 
and it ran. That's 2 generations of systems in between. My brain melted at 
this point.

Wikipedia has this to say on the subject:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_System_i#Instruction_set

One of my friends that has been knocking his head against this thing with 
me had an interesting thought, "if this thing natively compiles 
everything, potentially this may be a platform where java doesn't suck". 
Nice idea..doubt it.

> As for the CPU itself, I'm aware they are a little bizzare, but in theory, they
> should be pretty close to POWER3/POWER4.  I know AIX runs on them in 32-bit
> mode, so they should support bridge mode like the P3 does.

From the docs I have they look closer to the PPC601 stretched out to 
64bit. Stack looks to behave differently or I've misunderstood something 
(still reading). They came out as a successor to the CISC AS/400's which 
were if I understand this correctly a 48bit processor. They were in turn a 
successor to it looks liek the System/36, 34 and 38 (?). There's a legacy 
mode you can run to support old libraries and members from this system.

> If you think you are up for it.. I'd be glad to describe what the process would
> be, and try to help you through it.  That all being said, it won't be easy.
> Especially without some form of console.  Thats kinda...err..yeah..  No serial
> port?  Really? (I mean, does it at least *have* one?)

Yes. really. None of mine have an RS232 port. Terminals come off the 
machine off twin-ax y-d blocks. Think coaxial cable with two centre cores 
and a TNC connector. Terminal blocks are a multi-drop affair and the 
protocol talked along this wire appears to be SNA and the terminals mostly 
seem to be 5250 compat. I've read about using 3270's on there from the 
mainframe side of things but I've next to zero clue about this.

It does have on the front a small panel LCD which is used to show changes 
in the commands you input via the buttons saying where/what to IPL from. 
During the pre-IPL and post IPL there's lots of codes that flash up here 
in much the same way the old RS/6000 BIST system works, but closer to the 
modern pSeries panel displays.

Okay, I think you need to chase yourself down a 9406-170 off ebay (I've 
seen them go for $1 .. $100) and ensure you get the console cable or it'll 
not do anything. I'll take lots of photo's of mine this weekend assuming 
my dodgey camera behaves and put it on this list. I think it'll explain 
lots of questions. Here's some from 2008 when I first got the first 170.

http://deviate.fi/~uridium/as400/

Not much detail. I'll remedy this. But, quick tour of:
http://deviate.fi/~uridium/as400/as400_front_open-640x480.jpg

Bottom white button, power on/off. This behaves much like an ATX psu where 
it requests power on and off. You hit it when the machine is running, it's 
going to try and perform an orderly shutdown ..takes a minute or two.

Above it is two white numbered icons. They are the shape of ram chips and 
have LED's to indicate primary storage activity and secondary storage 
activity. Given that the concept of storage is "flat" for data, program, 
runtime, stack .. you'll see what these LED's are showing.

Okay, grey section.
Blue button "Select/Enter". Pretty straight forward.

Black buttons, menu up/down. To IPL from a CD in the optic drive I wander 
through the options till I see "01" then hit blue button. Then hit up till 
it shows "01 BN" then hit blue button. #There is no human readable bits in 
the menus, just numbers, and 1 or 2 letters.

Clear as mud? I think so too but that's how I get it to boot the DST 
environment to restore or install an image. After install, halt the system 
and change where it IPL's from or it sits there doing nothing.

Also.. from what I can tell, getting the serial console up off the twinax 
controller from the highly custom serial cable, seems to be timing 
sensitive. The controlling side is a windows PC that has a thing called 
iSeries Access on it. You create under XP/2000 a virtual dialup device. 
Point it at Com1-, attach the serial cable. The com device is a ppp 
interface to the machine. (Seriously). You can ping both sides of it from 
the XP machine. I've nmapped the ports. not terribly much is interesting.

You then fire up iSeries Access. This then is the other end of the PPP 
connection. It's a fat controll program that as an element includes a 
console application (you connect to the console over the ppp link). 
There's lots of other tools in there to do things. Sadly, most of them are 
unrelated much as I can tell to the initial bringing up of the machine.

So. there's your serial console.. on the remote end of a ppp connection 
over a proprietry cable plugged into a twinax controller that talks SNA (I 
think).

Twinax controller: http://tinyurl.com/78cvz66
Twinax Y-D block (4-port) for terminals &printers: http://tinyurl.com/7ytgupc

Check out this .pdf: http://tinyurl.com/7vpjaza   .. and have a light skim 
through it. It outlines the extremely basic "how to I power on and connect 
to my AS/400 to think about installing OS/400 in 101 easy steps".

The archeology and flailing about semi-blind continues..

Al.

-- 
  --
  Al Boyanich
  adb -w -P "world> " -k /dev/meta/galaxy/ksyms /dev/god/brain