Main Page

This Wiki is intended to help average computer users (probably you) who also are novice users with IBM i to get started with the system quickly. The system is in parts dramatically different from many things you've probably learned from conventional systems. This makes it hard to learn the concepts. Additionally, there's a certain amount of slang. Without proper translation into stuff we know, it's even more complicated to get going.

Fortunately, there's a wealth of online resources available in the web. Unfortunately, these are scattered around, sometimes providing insight to special topics while omitting basic information for helping novice users to just get started.

Why?

The AS/400 is a huge platform to explore. As you probably wouldn't expect to learn everything Linux from reading three Wikipedia-Articles, you may possibly understand that this Wiki has a lot of content and is constantly growing and filled with more information.

I had a hard time to learn and I want to make it easier for you to just get started.

Most content in this Wiki is based on my own experiences with an old 9401-150 machine, running OS/400 V4R5 with latest patches, which is from the early 2000's. When I describe newer machines or OS releases, I'll indicate that in the text.

Evolution

Why should you care for V4? The current version is V7.something!

Every OS does evolve over time. So does OS/400, or IBM i, as it's called today. Windows Server 2016 bears a certain resemblance to Windows 2000 (not counting the UI changes!). Much stuff you learned in the 2000's era is outdated and never needed again in modern systems, though. MacOS 9 from 2001 bears only a slight resemblance to today's OS X (or macOS as it's now called). Most conventional platforms don't just evolve, they change, often in incompatible ways.

This is different with OS/400. Newer releases of OS/400 carry over almost all stuff you'd know from V4. Most knowledge you acquired with just V4 isn't worthless with V7. V7 has additional capabilities to learn. And that's probably one of many reasons, why the AS/400 is sometimes called a mini-mainframe. It's all about backward compatibility, seen from an application's point of view.

Background

IBM has a long standing history for providing machinery and services for classical business cases. Maybe the AS/400 is commonly perceived as ultimately boring because of that: The AS/400 is mostly running stuff considered boring (by geeks). Commercial IT at it's best: Warehouse management, personnel administration, tracking account movements, to name a few. Stuff that makes sure civilisation as we know it won't collapse, because money stops flowing, carriage of goods ceases, personnel isn't directed to where needed.

IBM launched the AS/400 hardware platform with it's proprietary operating system called OS/400 in 1988. This platform was essentially a somewhat modified version of the IBM System/38, announced in 1978. Both machines were the brainchild of Frank Soltis and Glenn Henry.

Around the year 2000, the whole platform was rebranded to AS/400e (for eServer), reflecting IBMs strategy to focus on e-Business.

In 2006, the platform was rebranded again as System i or iSeries while the Operating System was named i5/OS and eventually IBM i.

See The Naming of the System for thoughts regarding this topic.

See also

• From the english Wikipedia:
  • IBM System i
  • IBM i

Getting started

If you are interested in getting to know (more) about AS/400 basics, you may read About Green Screens and mouse-clickable UIs as well as about Features which separate the AS/400 from common computer systems to get a first glance what makes this platform so unique. This might provide a better understanding when deciding if you want to continue exploring the AS/400 beyond theoretical statements.

Want to dive deep? You should decide if you want you own machine or if it's sufficient to have remote access to a machine to start exploring as an ordinary user, without administrative rights. You may start with the latter and get your own machine at a later point in time, though.

• Holger Scherer has been providing free access to an IBM i installation hosted in his company's bunker, for people to explore the system, learn and perhaps start programming. Unfortunately, this has been abused by commercial trainers and Holger decided to change rules. I absolutely support his decision but this means more restrictions for good guys also.
• If you decide having your own machine is the way to go, I encourage you to start looking at internet auction sites and companies with IBM i expertise for a used box to eventually call your own.

The ever growing UNIX-User's Cheater Table could probably be helpful in finding out a certain command when you know the command in UNIX.

If you're coming from the IBM Mainframe World, you'll be relieved that many concepts are borrowed from OS/360. If there's demand, I'll probably add an extra article for an overview of similarities and differences.

A word on virtualization

Currently there is no known way to run OS/400 on (virtual) x86 platforms. OS/400 can be virtualized — on appropriate hardware. That is, some kind of IBM POWER based system. But if you have the hardware in the first place, virtualization is probably superfluous.

OS/400 in recent versions can host LPARs for Linux and AIX (and itself), so it's quite possible to have a good deal of integration the other way 'round.

Further Reading

This selection of initial reading may be not applicable to your particular situation, maybe because you're not (yet) owning an AS/400 or your box came with OS/400 preinstalled.

• Getting started with the Hardware
• How to access your AS/400
• Basic Usage Instructions
• Installing OS/400
• Basic System Administration Tasks explained
• Getting Data in and out of your AS/400
• How to properly shut down your AS/400

Restrictions regarding this Wiki

This Wiki is read only for guest users because of frequent vandalism and spamming. Also, self-creating user accounts isn't allowed for the very same reasons.

Volunteers are very welcome, especially for correcting my possibly numerous syntactic errors and misplaced commas. Feel free write an eMail to me and I'll add an account for you.

I'm also happy with any feedback. Even if it's only to say thank you.

Rules regarding this Wiki

Quality of the content comes before quantity. Also, to provide reasonable searchability for the articles, please adhere to the following points:

• Avoid spelling errors. Be precise when mentioning products,
• Name articles concise and distinctly,
• Always add category-tags at end of articles. This permits automatic grouping of related articles and better retrieval if the search function doesn't provide expected results.

Please consult me before introducing new categories.