It depends on your perspective. To my mind, if the job can be done with commodity hardware for about 1/10 the price, I'd say the AS/400 is obsolete, regardless of whether or not people use them.
I read about Intel and AMDs Dual Core processor that's coming. Furthermore, you see all these Awesome computers with great power down at the consumer level. I am certain that as Jim states, you could do it better with modern and commonly available components today.
I would agree with you, Jim. They probably have anciently written programs that have not been converted into something new. From what I hear, there is a lot of technophobia around there. Takes em forever to modernize. Snails pace. Therefore they suffer and lag behind.
They may not know that big tasks of yesteryear are made simple today. Do they even have the STS's on CD yet? What about in downloadable MP3 format. Do they know what an Ipod is? Ha!
Heck you could almost keep track of a lot of it with Outlook 2003. Ha!
You are all thinking "inside the box". Expand your brain, and just DREAM it. What does TWI REALLY need to run their "business"??
One to two packs of 3x5 cards and a card box, labeled "Box 'O Buds".
I work on AS/400's as a consultant, mostly in mfg companies. They are not dinosaurs, as you suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of technology. They are designed for transaction throughput, not word processing or spreadsheet or other PC/Server/LAN/WAN/Etc tasks. Much like the difference between a steak and a butter knife; designed for a different purpose. In addition, the foot/400 is the most stable system around, and no indescript error messages that make you wonder "What the HEL* does THAT mean??". I realize that the PC and server world has made great strides in availability and stability in recent years, but still doesn't come anywhere near the reliability of the 400's, especially in terms of viruses and hackers.
But I do agree that given TWI's numbers and business functions, it is probably too powerful a machine for their NEED. Although today you can get AS/400's as small and inexpensive and most PC's & servers (the AS/400's are also now called servers), and can be as large and more powerful as huge mainframes, at a much lesser price. A very flexible system. But I don't see TWI's need for number crunching at the AS/400 level. Those days are far gone. Maybe at one time TWI needed that degree of disk and transactional power to keep up with the exploits of its "leadership" ...
Can you play games on it? And will it go on Greasespot? They need your expertise, Tom. Go back up there and get on staff. They need you to set up that card system.
Well, I'll be nice. Next spring when I work the yard sales, I'll keep an eye out for a couple commodore 64's or vic 20's for them. More processing power than they could ever need. And John, yes, they can still play (a few very old) games on them. They might even be able to get greasespot up- without the graphics..
I'm no IT specialist but this type of system seems to be overkill for such a small group, half of whom do not even use computers. And isn't this an old server? Not made anymore? Doesn't it use OS2 or some different kind of operating system?
You can run linux on AS/400 servers. In fact, you can set it up to appear to be multiple servers, if you wanted to. I don't know much about AS/400, but I do know that IBM donated a pretty beefy one to a place I used to work about five years ago. I assume they are still out there and in use.
You have to know a little bit about the history of the DP (that's what they used to call it) group at HQ. VPW would not consider *anything* but a designed IBM solution. To him, a computer was, and always was, "an IBM machine". So they have a computer room full of dinosaurs.
Could that be due to IBM's punchcard system used for organizing the Holocaust? Perhaps VPW said, "If it's good enough for der furher, it's good enough for me!"
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Ham
Yep.. makes me wonder how "private" anybody's emails are in that place, either.
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Steve!
AS/400's aren't obsolete.
Allstate Insurance used to put an AS/400 into each captive agent's office.
The company I work for now puts them into its retail operations.
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Jim
It depends on your perspective. To my mind, if the job can be done with commodity hardware for about 1/10 the price, I'd say the AS/400 is obsolete, regardless of whether or not people use them.
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What The Hay
Well IBM's stock has recently fallen from a high of $99.10/share (about a week ago) to around $94.00/share as of today 1/14/05.
Maybe what they really aren't happy about is the current market selloff during what is typically supposed to be earnings season. (Do they own IBM?)
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igotout
I read about Intel and AMDs Dual Core processor that's coming. Furthermore, you see all these Awesome computers with great power down at the consumer level. I am certain that as Jim states, you could do it better with modern and commonly available components today.
I would agree with you, Jim. They probably have anciently written programs that have not been converted into something new. From what I hear, there is a lot of technophobia around there. Takes em forever to modernize. Snails pace. Therefore they suffer and lag behind.
They may not know that big tasks of yesteryear are made simple today. Do they even have the STS's on CD yet? What about in downloadable MP3 format. Do they know what an Ipod is? Ha!
Heck you could almost keep track of a lot of it with Outlook 2003. Ha!
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Ham
Even that could be too much overkill. You could easily keep track of all their stuff with Microsoft Works for DOS and about 1meg of ram..
Could be they are finding it hard to get the X25 packet stuff to work on the internet.
I knew a person that still used a commodore 64 up to a couple years ago on the internet. Maybe he could give them some pointers!
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tomtuttle
You are all thinking "inside the box". Expand your brain, and just DREAM it. What does TWI REALLY need to run their "business"??
One to two packs of 3x5 cards and a card box, labeled "Box 'O Buds".
I work on AS/400's as a consultant, mostly in mfg companies. They are not dinosaurs, as you suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of technology. They are designed for transaction throughput, not word processing or spreadsheet or other PC/Server/LAN/WAN/Etc tasks. Much like the difference between a steak and a butter knife; designed for a different purpose. In addition, the foot/400 is the most stable system around, and no indescript error messages that make you wonder "What the HEL* does THAT mean??". I realize that the PC and server world has made great strides in availability and stability in recent years, but still doesn't come anywhere near the reliability of the 400's, especially in terms of viruses and hackers.
But I do agree that given TWI's numbers and business functions, it is probably too powerful a machine for their NEED. Although today you can get AS/400's as small and inexpensive and most PC's & servers (the AS/400's are also now called servers), and can be as large and more powerful as huge mainframes, at a much lesser price. A very flexible system. But I don't see TWI's need for number crunching at the AS/400 level. Those days are far gone. Maybe at one time TWI needed that degree of disk and transactional power to keep up with the exploits of its "leadership" ...
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igotout
Can you play games on it? And will it go on Greasespot? They need your expertise, Tom. Go back up there and get on staff. They need you to set up that card system.
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Ham
Well, I'll be nice. Next spring when I work the yard sales, I'll keep an eye out for a couple commodore 64's or vic 20's for them. More processing power than they could ever need. And John, yes, they can still play (a few very old) games on them. They might even be able to get greasespot up- without the graphics..
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Jim
You might even find them a spare AS/400
:)-->
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Mister P-Mosh
You can run linux on AS/400 servers. In fact, you can set it up to appear to be multiple servers, if you wanted to. I don't know much about AS/400, but I do know that IBM donated a pretty beefy one to a place I used to work about five years ago. I assume they are still out there and in use.
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Mister P-Mosh
Could that be due to IBM's punchcard system used for organizing the Holocaust? Perhaps VPW said, "If it's good enough for der furher, it's good enough for me!"
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Jim
I guess that since you're invoked Godwin's Law, the thread is over.
:)-->
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