Toolkit

Story: From IBM server architecture to the Xbox

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For 8 years, from its initial B series release to the E series, the AS400 and I worked together every day.

I may have rose colored glasses here, but through all its incarnations, the damn thing just ran. And ran. And no matter what you threw at it, no matter the semi-regular Cumulative Tapes ", the precursor to today's never-ending Service Packs, you overlayed on it (generally to enhance it, not fix it!), it hardly ever crashed, hardlly ever needed even a reboot - it continued to churn away 24/7 doing that "dirty, boring work" that no company could survive without. Perhaps it was the proprietary-ness, perhaps it was the lack of flashy lights and pretty GUIs - or perhaps it was just designed by a quality engineer with a single purpose, to do a job and do it well.

I was not alone here - every time you bumped into another AS/400 engineer or operator, the same story. The bloody thing works. Despite IBM's perception that everything with the blue badge is way over-priced, no one ever seemed to complain about the AS/400's bang-for-buck.

Unfortunately time marched on and we needed to follow the Gate's model of future computing. So, are we better off?

The AS/400 served its masters well then, and it still does now, by all accounts. I must say, dealing each day with seemingly never ending system fails or almost daily patching, I miss that stability - and confidence.

Mr Soltis, take a bow.

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