XT/370 Questions

[kobayashimaru]

Hey Everyone!

This weekend I will hopefully be going to pick up some more IBM hardware to play with. The seller doesn't know anything about it as he just grabbed it all when his employer was going to toss it, but from the photos, it appears to be a standard 5170 with keyboard, a 3178 terminal and an XT/370 with correct keyboard and monitor (along with three other keyboards not pictured.) Now I know there isn't much of anything I can do with the terminal and the AT is just an AT (which is cool), but is there anything that the XT can do aside from interfacing with a non-existent mainframe? Does it only have terminal functionality or can it actually execute System/370 programs? Is it compatible with standard PC/XT software, since it has a completely different video system that a standard XT?

Thanks!
Joe

 

[cb88]

Supposedly it can actually execute S/370 programs if you have the emulator card and was used for development of software for the S/370 system... But it's just slower than a real mainframe less memory etc... I don't the think original xt/370 can page memory either but some of the later versions can..

 

[willmurray461]

What do the XT/370 keyboard and monitor look like? I thought the were just the standard PC XT keyboard and 5151/5153/5154 monitor.

 

[NeXT]

My assumption coming from the XT/3270 and AT/3270 is the keyboard is a slightly different 122 key arrangement and the monitor is basically the 5153 but in a different style enclosure. Cannot really say for certain as I have never seen a complete system but I dare say that it would be a full-house' worth of ISA cards.

http://www.pc-collection.com/images/i/ibm/IBM_5273_3270_AT.jpg

That I am aware of the 370 boardset is strictly single user (among other crippling features), so you cannot use external terminals with it.

 

[cb88]

Yeah but that is the AT/370 which is a different machine... than the XT/370 the XT looks like an XT... obviously.

 

[NeXT]

Point is the machine is the same but the peripherals are different.

https://static1.squarespace.com/sta...861/t/563e1bfae4b0bf0156c93508/1446910975286/

 

[Chuck(G)]

You mean, I can't hook my bus-and-tag peripherals to it?

What good is that?

 

[NeXT]

I do believe actually that later mainframe emulations could, actually.
According to The Wiki...

Later, IBM introduced the Personal/370 (aka P/370), a single slot 32-bit MCA card that can be added to a PS/2 or RS/6000 computer to run System/370 OSs (like MUSIC/SP, VM, VSE) parallel to OS/2 (in PS/2) or AIX (in RS/6000) supporting multiple concurrent users. It is a complete implementation of the S/370 Processor including a FPU co-processor and 16 MB memory. Management and standard I/O channels are provided via the host OS/hardware. An additional 370 channel card can be added to provide mainframe-specific I/O such as 3270 local control units, 3400/3480 tape drives or 7171 protocol converters.

Although a single-card product, the P/370 ran three times faster than the 7437, attaining 3.5 MIPS, on par with a low-end IBM 4381.[13] A subsequent book (by the same author) claims 4.1 MIPS for the P/370.[14]

The Personal/370 was available as early as November 1989 although on a "special bid basis".[15]

I believe it's called the Channel Emulation/A card.

 

[g4ugm]

The XT/370 came with a program that runs in DOS and emulates the VM Hypervisor, so provides things like the print spooler, and an adapted copy of CMS that ran on the 370 card. If you get one with a working 370 card and the software it is IMHO quite a nice system. The CMS that comes with it is rather more advanced than the one that can be freely downloaded and used with Hercules so slower but more functional. Not sure how easy it is to get software in without a Mainframe. Lots of discussion from the time here:-

http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/vmshare

 

[Chuck(G)]

I do believe actually that later mainframe emulations could, actually.
According to The Wiki...

I believe it's called the Channel Emulation/A card.

Never seen one of those--so I can hook up a 2321 data cell drive or a 3330 disk drive?

I did find a photo of the Channel Emulation card--it's clearly for MCA, however:

 

[g4ugm]

Never seen one of those--so I can hook up a 2321 data cell drive or a 3330 disk drive?

I did find a photo of the Channel Emulation card--it's clearly for MCA, however:

I believe that IBM made at least two types of Channel Adaptor. Card a "S/370 Channel Card"

http://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/Sh...US8B3927/index.html&lang=en&request_locale=en

and an "S/390 Channel Adaptor"

https://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/S...S197-004/index.html&lang=en&request_locale=en

I am not sure that the Channel Cards support DASD, but you might want to give it a try!.

BUSTECH also made channel cards.....

 

[g4ugm]

looking here :-

http://www.tavi.co.uk/ps2pages/ohland/p390.html

It sayes

You cannot use a Micro-Channel P/390 with the PCI S/390 Parallel Channel Adapter. The "bridge" chips used in combo systems don't support busmaster transfers between adapters of different bus types.

so PCI channel adaptors must exist...
.. but I don't have either sort in by box of adaptors....

Pic of my P390 attached...



... with Raspberry PI for scale.

 

[kobayashimaru]

All right, thanks for the info everybody. It's definitely got the special monitor and keyboard with it. I'm not sure bas d on the limited photos if the AT is the 3270 variety, but there's only one monitor. There are also three unseen keyboards. The three pictured are an XT Model F, an AT Model F and a Model F-122. I'll get to see everything in person on Sunday. Somewhere I have a copy of the 3270 emulation software in the box, which I picked up at the flea market. This will be interesting

 

[kobayashimaru]

So, the haul was not as wonderful as I was lead to believe, but still worth the 250 mile round trip and the $250 I paid. Here's what I got with photos to come soon:
A 5150 64/256 model with one original floppy drive and no cards
A 5170 case with power supply and nothing else
A 3178C terminal
A 3179G terminal with Model M 122 key keyboard
Two Model M 1390120 keyboards (silver IBM square emblem)
Two PC AT model F keyboards (one labeled for 1-2-3)
A Wyse terminal keyboard
An IBM 3299 terminal hub
An Irma board in box
A sealed copy of WordPerfect 5.1
A sealed copy of Lotus 1-2-3 release 2.2
Lotus 1-2-3 release 2.0
Lotus 1-2-3 release 1A
WordPerfect 5.2 for Windows
IBM Professional Office System "Getting Started" manual.

Overall a decent deal. Stuff to play with or possibly go towards a new transmission!

 

[lowen]

l...

You cannot use a Micro-Channel P/390 with the PCI S/390 Parallel Channel Adapter. The "bridge" chips used in combo systems don't support busmaster transfers between adapters of different bus types.

so PCI channel adaptors must exist...
.. but I don't have either sort in by box of adaptors....
...

I have an ISC/390 here that I can use; here are pics of the PCI cardset, including the PCI P/390, two Artic960 PCI channel adapters, one of which is fiber-attached (ESCON: see pics in the article at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESCON to verify the connector), and PCI DASD RAID controller.

 

[g4ugm]

The connector on the Bus and Tag channel card looks very like that on the MP3000 we had at work. I guess its a very similar setup to the ISC....