[SunRescue] OT: AS/400 stuff

[Joshua D. Boyd]

On Tue, 5 Jun 2001, Paul Khoury wrote:

> Didn't think so.  500 bucks would be nice, but I doubt that also.
> So how does OS/390 or VM, or MVS (whichever it is) compare with
> UNIX?

I wouldn't be surprised is IBM had a way to get it cheaper for the P390.
While it is the same OS as the big boys, since all OSs are keyed to the
hardware, IBM could very well charge less.  It would be to their benifit
to do so, since the P390s are mainly meant for development, and you don't
want to charge a small company $100,000 just so that they can support your
platform.

Anyway, I know that VM isn't very useful by itself.  I suppose that
someone like oracle could write a version of oracle to run directly on VM,
but VM is really meant to manage system partitioning and the running of
other operating systems.  VM is optional, and it is also quite expensive.

I've never been sure about the difference of OS/390 and MVS, or wether
they were just interchangable terms.  I do know that in the future OS/390
will be called z/Os following in like with changing the machine name to
the zSeries.

That said, OS/390 is compliant enough to be certified unix.  This was a
strategic move to help encourage people to port their applications to
OS/390.
 
> Of course.  I mean, who is stupid enough to wipe it and pay $100,000 to
> have a legit license?  Unless you're the NSA or something, but in that
> case you'll either have new or better hardware...

Any smart company is going to wipe all incoming hardware.  Further, if you
expect to ever derive financial profit from a machine, you should make
sure that you have valid licenses for everything on it.

--
Joshua Boyd