Re: Applying configuration from IPL "Type A" to "Type B" on AS/400 9406-170

Hello,

Am 09.05.2023 um 14:09 schrieb s6qdx via MIDRANGE-L <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

Hello Mr. Nameless, ;-)

Hi! I know I'm on the privacy side, at least for now :)

OK.

[try-as400.pocnet.net]
Ok there's a LOT of info there! I'm sure that'll come in handy, thanks!

Don't hesitate to ask if you miss something there, or something is unclear! It's still work in progress.

If you have Unix or Linux experience, this table might be extraordinarily useful:

https://try-as400.pocnet.net/wiki/UNIX-User%27s_Cheater_Table

What exactly constitutes a "virtual terminal"? Are you aware that the "native terminal tongue" of OS/400 is 5250 and not VT100? Just asking!

Yes, I meant a 5250 emulator, if that makes sense? I'm still trying to grasp the right terminology

Yes, that totally makes sense and is the right term, also.

So first of all, I'm happy to say the issue is "resolved". Quoted because there was actually no issue, or at least not as bad as I imagined. I followed Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis's suggestion and he was actually right. I think I just replied to him instead of the mailing list, hopefully this time my reply doesn't get lost.

I didn't recognize any public answer from you to Larry regarding that topic.

Anyhow, I didn't actually remove the whole interface, but just disabled it. Turns out I had to IPL on B and... wait. It took like half an hour for the connection to get back, but eventually it did as the interface was set to AUTOSTART.

Ah, very good!

Well at least now that I know what the pitfalls are, I'm paying extra attention on anything I change.

That's in general a good advice to follow. :-)

The thing is, I got this system as a hobby out of curiosity, but didn't really know what I was getting myself into. I didn't even know if an OS was installed: thinking back, that would've been unfortunate not to have the OS already there and configured for ETH console.

Indeed. But now

After this "incident" I got scared, and was able to find some compatible tapes for a reasonable price, and I'm planning to take a backup.

Good idea. See also Larry's reply on tapes.

Since you state, you're not US based, I guess that shipping tapes from Larry to you might be prohibitively expensive. QIC tapes are increasingly rare and increasingly expensive to obtain.

For various reasons, I replaced the QIC drive in my model 150 with a HP DDS3 tape drive. Works like a charm, eventhough writing to DDS3 is not exactly "streaming" — the drive is too fast for what the machine can sustain. :-) Monthly full backups ("Save 21") go to DDS3 to fit on one cartridge, and daily increments go to more robust DDS1 90m tapes. When I obtained bigger disks, I tested BMR capability to work like a charm, and I occasionally also need to restore single files from tape when I was too careless, ending up on a dead end after doing a chain of changes to a project of mine. ;-)

Not sure how a 170 performs in relation to a 150. But DDS tapes are easy and cheap to obtain. If in doubt, I offer you to have some from me. My stock is several dozens with different capacities.

That's the other thing I wasn't prepared for: everything is either hard to find or extremely expensive, at least here (EU/Italy).

Yes, sometimes it is. I'm located in Germany and it takes some luck to look at eBay just a the right time, even if searching Europe-wide. I had much luck to get some still sealed QIC 1G tapes for my P0x machines' external drives. :-)

Luckily, hard disks seem to be of extraordinary quality and die much less often than OEMs or PC style ones. Same goes for the rest of the hardware components.

I've done some research and, as you suggested, to be safe I'd need to be able to secure at least one of:
- a serial operations console cable: I think the part I'd need is 97H7557-0745, but I've looked everywhere and it's nowhere to be found... I've only found one on eBay (though not 0745) and it was from the US. It would cost me more than what I paid for the AS/400.

Yes, that's the biggest problem. I've also not yet had the chance to get a cable myself to measure and publicly document the pinout.

- a physical terminal: these are extremely hard to find here

Yes. Or ridiculously expensive.

The cheapest I found was still too expensive for me, and came with no compatible cables. It had a couple of round connectors, I believe those are twinax connectors, and so I'd need "something else" to connect it. I didn't do much research at that point, but I'm afraid that extra something is going to be yet another hard to find/expensive piece of equipment.

See here for details:

https://try-as400.pocnet.net/wiki/Your_own_AS/400#Console

https://try-as400.pocnet.net/wiki/Getting_started_with_the_Hardware#Console_Considerations

Need to add some photos of things for better understanding.

To be fair I don't even know if I have a Twinax controller, if that's even possible?

Yes, that's possible. Usually, it's a PCI card with a DB9 and something akin to a "mini centronics" plug for a serial port: IBM feature code 2720. But there also have been dual-serial PCI cards, AFAIR code 2721. One of the two plugs was dedicated to that serial console, then.

I tried to have a look in the hardware info menu, and it says no twinax controller can be found... I need to do a bit more research to determine what kind of hardware I actually have installed though.

Run dsphdwrsc *ahw to get an overview.

If you want to learn a bit more about the hierarchy of hardware resources, you might run strsst, and menu items 1, 7, 2, 1. Place 9 in the Opt column to reveal associated hardware.

If you lack to understand something, don't hesitate to ask.

Thank you! Very much appreciated, you've been extremely helpful :)

You're most welcome! I feel AS/400 hobbyists are somewhat rare and thus the community (with a hobbyist focus) is small.

:wq! PoC