(Other) Steve: the smallest Multiprise 3000, model 7030-H30, was rated at approximately 60 MIPS and 11 MSUs. It did not offer sub-capacity IBM software licensing. GOLC was available but not zNALC nor Solution Edition offerings. You could get an IFL, but unfortunately it wasn't very exciting, and I don't think you could get an IFL-only machine. Parallel Sysplex, GDPS, Coupling Facilities, and FICON/FCP (at any speed) were flat out unavailable. Networking was...well, it had networking at least. Crypto? No, afraid not, nor any decimal floating point or 64-bit instructions. The next upgrade was a giant jump to an H50 with approximately 117 MIPS and exactly 20 MSUs. (Yowza!) I can't remember for sure, but I think it was a disruptive upgrade requiring an outage. IBM wasn't able to offer a same-serial upgrade to a subsequent model, unfortunately, but IBM always tries to offer attractive upgrades despite that limitation. (Please give us a ring.) It did have (slow) internal disk storage, but that topped out at about 200 GB, or less than a single EAV these days. It had limited availability-related design features.
In contrast, today's smallest capacity IBM mainframe is the System z10 BC model 2098-A01, rated at approximately 26 MIPS and a mere 3 MSUs. If you need to upgrade, you can even move to a 4 MSU model, then 5, etc., and way past 10 times the capacity of a maxed out MP3000. (Very nice!) You can even upgrade for a day (Capacity On Demand) for a small amount of money, to handle a temporary surge, and there are lots of other new CoD features available. Also, 3 MSU sub-capacity licensing is available for practically all IBM software on the z10 BC, and you've got zELC, EWLC, MWLC, zNALC, and Solution Edition offerings on top of that. Not to mention full speed engine zAAPs and zIIPs in addition to beefy IFLs (with an advertised price of 47.5K in 2010 dollars not 125K in 1999 dollars). And of course it's a vastly better machine in so many other respects. Oh, and it has an "advertised" entry price lower than the Multiprise 3000's, especially in inflation-adjusted dollars. Yes, the z10 BC is physically bigger (and with its disk added), so let's subtract a point for that. But I'd say the z10 BC offers a very compelling set of improvements. Don't get me wrong: I'm quite fond of the Multiprise 3000, and I somewhat understand the hagiographic memories. But the z10 BC is an amazing machine and definitely represents significant progress. - - - - - Timothy Sipples IBM Consulting Enterprise Architect for New, Advanced, and/or Innovative Solutions (VCT) Based in Singapore & Serving the "Growth Markets" E-Mail: timothy.sipp...@us.ibm.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
