Re: OS/400 V4R3 installation CDs

Outside of using SVC those drives will not work, won’t be recognized by the system, and will entirely likely be burned up shortly due to power/cooling. Even the newer IBM drives will burn up due to cooling. (Learned that the hard way with Larry while building the Franken series boxes……)

Aside from the physical issues, there is as Charles pointed out the 512 vs 520 bytes sectors, but what’s 4 bytes among friends, right? 😉.

Also: If your system has keys, remember to save them before you try to rebuild it. Otherwise every 70 days you’ll do it again…….



Jim Oberholtzer
Agile Technology Architects
From: MIDRANGE-L <midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> on behalf of Charles Wilt <charles.wilt@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thursday, March 26, 2026 at 11:16 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: OS/400 V4R3 installation CDs

I'd be very shocked if BlueSCSI worked ... IBM AS/400 drives had some
particular firmware and 520(?) byte sectors...

Honestly, a v4r3 is pretty dang old...installation has changed. Electronic
delivery came out in v5r1.

Good luck!
Charles

On Thu, Mar 26, 2026 at 10:01 AM Ali Mualla <geek@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi all,



Long time lurker, first time writing here.



Yesterday, I became the proud owner of a Model 170 in fairly good
condition (IMO). Bought from a really nice retired gentleman who used to
work as an IT technician on IBM i hardware, and who came to deliver the
machine and help me set it up in my home network and connect to it. The
system came with a clean licensed install of V4R3. As I understood from
him, he restored the system from a QIC backup. I also got a 5250 terminal
box and an IBM keyboard, and in a couple of days will receive PCMCIA 5250
cards bought from ebay in the US.



I’m a software engineer with almost 20 years of experience in about half a
dozen programming languages, but who’s new to AS/400 and has been learning
on and off for the past year using the great pub400.



As I live in Germany, the system came with the interface in German. While
I’m learning the language and debating using that as an extra excuse to
practice the language (and slowly reading Holger Scherer’s Kurs für
Einsteiger), but still want to learn and be able to install the OS from
scratch, since one of the things I want to try is replacing the HDDs with
BlueSCSI Ultra.



I was wondering if anyone in the community has V4R3 CDs or ISOs laying
around who’s willing to sell them, or sell CD-R copies or even provide ISOs
for download. I’m willing to pay for the hassle of making the ISOs and
uploading them somewhere.



Kind Regards,

Ali Mualla

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