The AS/400 first hit the market in 1988 as a midrange box. With the exception of PC's the AS/400 is the most widely sold computer in the world. CGC offers business software (for a very narrow market nitch) which runs on the AS/400. Using our software (which is somewhat resource consuming compared to most - lots of features) you can support any where from (up to) 30 users on the smaller boxes (the smaller model 800's) up to 1500 users on the high end model 810's. The AS/400 (as CGC sells) is still in production today as the iSeries. Low end models start in the $12,000.00 range (I have been lead to believe). The AS/400 Operating System (OS/400) can run (in a partition by themselves) Linux, Unix, AIX, Windows 2000/2003 (and probably some others). Or, (I believe) you can run Linux as the only OS. Not sure on this. Typically OS/400 comes with a wide range of software included in the base price), such as communication, security, database and so on. Some might consider it a very good boat anchor. I very much disagree. George -----Original Message----- Date: 04 Sep 2003 09:20:47 -0700 From: "Ted Gould" Subject: RE: A/S400 ... > > I have no idea what the thing is. Can anyone shed some light > > on whether or not it would be useful and what for? > > Here's an idea for something you can do with it: > > http://tlf.cx/bilder/tn/sun-beerserver.jpg.ths.html No! It's not useful at all, you should give it away. No, no, you should PAY someone to take it! I think that there are still A/S400's in production, they're basically IBM servers. I'm not sure if Linux will run on it (Linux will run on the processors for sure, but I don't know about the boards) but if you have to go the AIX route it might be difficult. I've heard more than one horror story about IBM's prices for stupid stuff like upgrading a hard drive (hint: it requires a 'new' OS module). So, in summary - it could be useful for some things - probably the biggest being realizing some history (which isn't a bad thing). I wouldn't expect to start a web hosting company with it. --Ted