16

Do these exist? Can you recommend one?

user48545
  • 3,291
  • 9
  • 31
  • 42
  • I do not think you are going to find an AS/400 or System i emulator out there. That's a very complicated and fancy piece of kit with some unusual architectural features which are not exactly plainly documented. – JUST MY correct OPINION Aug 15 '10 at 15:06
  • Seems very hard/impossible to find, yes. But if you give some examples of your use-cases maybe people can come up with a work-alike combination. After all, it's just another Posix system, isn't it? – Jacob Oscarson Aug 16 '10 at 09:50
  • t's not POSIXy at all but more sui generis. It does have a POSIX environment as an addon. – Allen Aug 16 '10 at 22:40
  • 6
    @Jacob, no. An As/400 is unlike anything else you've ever seen. – Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen Aug 18 '10 at 03:09
  • And keep in mind that AS/400s **are virtual machines**. So if you buy one, you automatically have an "AS/400 virtual machine". (And they are essentially POSIX-compliant and have been for many years.) – user2338816 Feb 25 '15 at 13:51

8 Answers8

12

No. This is highly proprietary and I do not know of one.

You might find http://www.holgerscherer.de/cgi-bin/db2www/rz.nd/rz?menu=23&language=ENG interesting.

Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen
  • 73,784
  • 33
  • 194
  • 347
  • I have an account with them (I've been an AS/400 programmer for years). Aside from some authority issues getting stuff done (it's very 'locked down', to avoid people doing bad things), the free option is great if you just want to tinker with AS/400 programming. – roryhewitt Aug 17 '10 at 23:15
  • Unfortunately this link is dead. Where did it go to? – Alex Angas Jul 05 '19 at 07:05
  • @AlexAngas: poking that URL through [the web archive](http://web.archive.org/web/20150825183358/http://pub1.de/cgi-bin/db2www/getaccounteng.d2w/main) led me to discover that http://pub1.de/ has reopened free accounts, as a free playground initiative from http://www.rzkh.de/, which offers $$$ IBM i production servers. – i336_ Jul 10 '19 at 14:21
5

The best you can do is get a cheap, used AS400 on ebay or an LPAR on a larger machine.

Allen
  • 2,228
  • 18
  • 22
4

There used to be a PC based emulator named Baby/400 but I can find no recent information about it.

Try the mailing lists at midrange.com.

James Allman
  • 40,573
  • 11
  • 57
  • 70
4

Emulating an AS/400 is not possible, but if you just want to poke around,

http://pub1.de/ / http://pub400.com/ offers free playground-level access to AS400s for personal use.

I just made an account and am having a (very fascinated!) look around. I have no idea what I'm doing (and no technical support is offered by the service) but it's very fun, and I can't break anything!

The service is offered by http://www.rzkh.de/.

NB: SSL is an advertised option (over port 990), but tn5250j doesn't seem to connect properly (it connects, then hangs). Only port 23 works. Perhaps a temporary glitch.

i336_
  • 1,813
  • 1
  • 20
  • 41
3

The www.holgerscherer.de site is good for free basic, general usage. There are others for more intense uses, though not 'free'. A good one is the iDevCloud site. I've had some very good experiences with that group. Note that it can be better for "I need a whole new system image for myself" rather than "I need to study RPG or CL".

user2338816
  • 2,163
  • 11
  • 11
1

Got a Baby desktop AS/400 in full working order and an 80x25 green screen (rare) Still got all my source would love to see a modern emulator and transfer all my software

Keep up the good work

Mike @GD6ICR

Mike W
  • 11
  • 1
0

In the late 1990's worked on an pSeries emulation of the AS/400 for JBA Software that ran over Aix, but was to run our software (System/400) for a large US company. Know of no other stable emulation.

Remember that there are TWO versions of the AS/400 out there - but the CISC has been superceded by the RISC, so only get a V4R2M0 plus iSeries machine - have a V3R2M5 CISC AS/400 9404 expanded, with all the source. However, the cyclon batteries have failed, and the clock backup battery is no longer available, so be aware if buying an older model. Loved RPG3.

Remember that the RPG language was across the S/32, S/34 and S/38, and the S/38, but see http://www.itjungle.com/tfh/tfh041006-story01.html.

Stephen Roesner
  • 1
  • 1
    Even if one could find a 15 year old AS/400, learning the midrange platform with it would be like trying to learn Windows from a Windows 95 machine. Yes, you'd learn something, but what's the point? – Buck Calabro Feb 25 '15 at 14:39
0

In the late 80's early 90's (OS400 v1.0 started out in 1988) there was a dos based emulator, I think it was called APC400.. I should have a copy some ware on a couple of 3 1/2 " diskettes. Mind you, it was pretty crippled/limited and, to my recollection equivalent with OS400 v 1.3.

Wim Tijman
  • 1