AS/400 & Toys…

First off the Photo Gallery. No, I didn't use BMT's photo gallery, just wanted a seperate page of thumbs for the AS400.

Background — I work at a computer shop in the afternoons for fun. The shops been around for over 7 years collecting old equipment and just “putting it in the back” so this place is like the worlds biggest playground to me. On any regular day I'll spend anywhere from 30 min to three hours there helping out, usualy just answering questions and setting up customers PC's at workstations and starting the repair process on em. Then about once a week I'll go in for a full day (or two) of straight hard work to better organize the entire store (so I work on the store, not customer pc's). Point being I've run into a SHITLOAD of hardware that may be slightly out-dated but 100% useable with nobody in the immediate area taking claim to it's immediate use. Thats where I come in and start askin to have/use stuff. After COMPLETELY re-wiring the entire network at the shop (not to awfully big. just lotsa switches n' cabling meh) I have come to organize all the server architecture and am laying claim to some equipment. This post is bout the AS/400. I'll post about the rest of the server archi

*drum role* The AS/400e - Photo Gallery
I havn't fully identified it yet but it is definately slightly ghetto old but from what I (so far) understand about AS/400's is I can still learn what the basics and get an overall understanding for the equipment AND have a working RPG programming atmosphere etc. etc. Right now there are two AS/400's in the back room of the shop *from now on called the Server Room becuase it's where I'm organizing and setting everything up to be run if it's not being re-located elsewhere*. One of the AS/400's turns on without problem, it's fully enclosed and looks clean as hell sitting inside a nice flat black enclosure with a few HUUUUGE fans inside it. The other AS/400 is shelled (but has a complete shell adn accessories) and is sitting naked in the middle of the server room. I'm lame as hell but I havn't even connected to the one that is complete and turned on. It's just sitting there running.

The assumptions i've come to so far…
1. the AS/400 is configured through a terminal I don't have. I am assuming I can emulate a 5250 emulator & a serial cable (hopefully). It seems like everything I read on the topic contradicts everythign else. I have yet to determine if I need a “special” terminal cable or if a regular serial cable will work and if not where I can get the pinout of the 'special' cable from IBM.
2. the AS/400 runs OS400 with extra operating systems “on the side” running on what is essentialy a computer on a card that gest plugged into the system itself.
3. The AS/400 is ready to serve about a billion trillian millian gigs of SCSI by looking at all the controller cards, cables, n' connectors in/on the thing. (although it only came standard with 4. 4.3g SCSI drives, CDrom & tape.
4. I realy don't know wtf i'm doing but it should be fun to know more about an architecture I know nothing about.

If anyones got any tips for a COMLPETE AS/400 newb. they'd be handy to have. I don't even know how to tell what *series* it is. all it says on the front (case) is “AS/400e” *shrug*

Notes:
Why AS/400's run OS400 w/other OS's on the side
AS/400 Online Library
Free AS/400 Access & lame tutorial