If you're looking for some "What next?" ideas, here are some potential ones, not necessarily in order:
1. If you have a HMC with a DVD-RAM drive, it might be possible to automate IPL to some degree using a custom DVD. 2. The z/VM 5.3 Evaluation Edition is published as requiring a z10 machine, but z/VM 5.3 was compatible with the z800 also. If you can IPL anything from a DVD, the z/VM 5.3 Evaluation Edition might IPL. It'll be a slow IPL if it does -- the z10 significantly improved DVD IPL performance, as I recall -- but it might work. Please refer to the z/VM 5.3 Evaluation Edition license agreement for any use limitations, of course. The Evaluation Edition can use some ECKD volumes for certain purposes (paging, spooling), but you might be able to use SCSI volumes instead. 3. If you can get z/VM going, then other operating systems are more feasible. MUSIC/SP might work, for example. (Again, check the license agreement and contact the copyright owner if you'd like to make a request.) 4. Mark Post would be the expert, but if you're having trouble with SLES 11 SP1 then try backing up to SLES 11 "SP0" (the original 11.0 release). According to the SP1 release notes, SUSE added z10 instruction support in SP1, so that might have broken something on the z800. I've found some other release notes suggesting that z900/z800 were definitely dropped in SP2 and perhaps also in SP1. 5. You could also try building Gentoo on your machine. (It'll probably take a while.) I can't remember if the mainline Linux kernel has retired z900/z800 support, but if it hasn't, then even today's Gentoo should build. 6. Debian might work. Debian tends to build hyper conservatively for the lowest common denominator. The current Debian release is "Jessie" Version 8.8. 7. I don't know if you can get KVM built and running on a z800 -- it might be too far back -- but that'd be fun if you can. Then you'd have a lot of flexibility to run multiple Linux instances concurrently, and with memory overcommitment. 8. You might want to consider shifting to LPAR mode and carving your machine up into two LPARs: one "public" (if you decide to start letting Internet connected users to play with your machine), the other "private," where you can experiment without having to worry about security and other risks as you try stuff. These LPARs will be equivalent to "air gapped" servers. You can define the LPARs however you wish, but you will be able to assure that "public" users cannot take all your "private" capacity, that you'll always have some minimum reserved "private" capacity that you decide. But, meanwhile, lots of other people can have fun, too. :-) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Timothy Sipples IT Architect Executive, Industry Solutions, IBM z Systems, AP/GCG/MEA E-Mail: sipp...@sg.ibm.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
