Vic's adventures with a P/390

The Card

Through the Hercules mailing list, I learned of the availability of Microchannel P/390 cards for an excellent price. I (and a group of like-minded individuals) contacted the kind soul who volunteered himself to order the cards for us, and through the wonder of international monetary transfer, the deal was secured.

The Server

The potential fly in the ointment came with the knowledge that I would have to find a microchannel PC or server to host the card. I knew where I could find some unused Microchannel servers -- at least there were some there when I was working there 12 months before! As luck would have it, they had not yet disposed of them, and I managed to obtain a Server 500, 64MB RAM, about 16GB of SCSI disk, a large number of spare MC adapters (including a couple of precious IBM Dual EtherStreamers) for a VERY REASONABLE price.

Here's the server, in its temporary location in front of the other stuff in my office.

Putting the Two Together

I had the server, now I needed the P/390! I used the time to get more understanding of the P/390 environment (and to sort a couple of niggling problems with OS/2 on the server).

Another modern wonder is tracking of shipments via the web. Using this great technology (I'm sorry, but sometimes small things really amuse and excite me) I could follow my card across the Pacific, all the way to my door.

After what seemed like an eternity, the card arrived (on my birthday -- HOW COOL!). I managed to resist the temptation to do things with it for all of about thirty seconds (I was supposed to be working from home, after all).

If you've not seen a P/390 card before, here it is. The top card is the actual processor card, the bottom card is 96MB of additional S/390 RAM. The large gold-looking square on the processor card is the heatsink on the S/390 processor.

These photos show the assembled P/390 complex. The memory card attaches to the processor card via an edge connector and some small plastic spacers. Even though the memory card has a microchannel connector, this is used for power only (the card physically occupies a slot, but not logically).

Next to install it into the server -- very tricky, since the two cards are joined together but they have their individual Microchannel slots they have to plug in to. Here's the card installed.

Joy of joys, the card survived it's cross-Pacific journey, and passed all tests.

OK, you've built a mainframe, NOW WHAT!!!