mainframe.dev

The last few days have been eventful. I was contacted by the datacenter that the mainframe's cage is now ready for moving in, and the power has been made available. Very exciting! I grabbed my home-made power cables (more on that later) and my best screwdrivers and set off to the datacenter. The view next to the datacenter The datacenter staff, not needing a forklift in their day-to-day, had managed to solicit the services of a forklift, the associated operator, and some very handy folks to help navigate the mainframe from the storage space to its final location. After some intense period of fighting the inclination of the road between the storage facility and the cage (and a door that was a bit too small) it was finally in place. Incidentally we were forced to trust the wheels on this pretty rough floor. I did not expect it to roll that well on raw concrete, I was pleasantly surprised. This thing is a tank! Finally in place! Now, everybody wanted to see if it ...

This is an knowledge base of various information about the IBM DS6800 that I hope will be useful if you ever need to repair one of these disk arrays. The intention is for this post to be updated as new information becomes apparent or outdated. Right now the post is very much in a pre-alpha state and I hope to have more of a narrative down the road, but I thought it would be fun to share the story as it develops. The DS6800 controller, our patient Note: The post has been moved to its own site to allow for other interested parties to contribute. Turns out there are quite a number of people that want to help :-). Continue reading at https://ds6800.mainframe.dev .