IBM Mainframe Forum

this may be posted in the wrong forum( if so im sorry)

i am the work study for the CIS acidemic chair at my school.
i aquired an old ibm 5363 today(just had to haul it off)
no cables or anything was included
i know nothing about this equipment i now own.
my advisor told me it was an AS-400 Mainframe.

numbers on the front :
ibm 5363
M/T 5363
S/N 10-13328
the only number on the back:
B/M 92X3483
thats it for what i do know

what i would like to know :
any place to find documentation on how to plug it in, connect it to my network, and use it, what i need to get to hook up to it, what cables hook to it, ect, anything
pretty much i was handed a piece of equipment and told it was a mainframe and thats the most i have ever been exposed to them? i would love to know how this machine could be useful to me
please any help would be very very appreciated

Cannot really help you but I can correct something - an AS400 is not a mainframe it is more a souped up PC running AIX - IBM's version of Unix for the AS400. But I do not know if a 5363 is an AS400 or not. Google to the rescue - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_5363! It is a system 36 - ancient and pre-dates the AS400 (IIRC).

thanks i got this thing today and i was told to learn about it, harder than i thought i dont even know what i can do with this machine but im gonna figure it out thanks

DO NOT POST THE SAME ISSUE ON MULTIPLE FORUMS AT THE SAME TIME
it is considered bad manners and it just wastes people time having them give duplicate answers

multiple posting is allowed only if after a reasonable time You do not get a response to the preceding one

for this kind of issues the best places to seek help are those dealing with vintage/retrocomputing equipment/hobby

anyway the <machine> would be <useful> only if You have the hobby of collecting such equipment
right now and given its condition You can use it, as said in the <other> thread, as a SPACE EATER

for some s/36 manuals look at www.bitsavers.org

Unless you are a museum and are trying to get this thing to run I see no use in it at all. Alone the power consumption ....

Before spending too much time on it, do some background reading on S/36. Then decide. "Thar's gold in them thar circuits" might get you a few bucks if you scrap it.

To get it running, talk to IBM. You're an educational institution, you'd get all the software free/at discount. You'll need cables. You probably can't "just" hook it up to your network , but I suppose there'd be a way. But before all of that, is it able to be any benefit to you? Students learning RPG III as a general introduction to programming? I don't think so.

You don't have any peripherals, so stand-alone is not even an option - and again, why?

"Thar's gold..."

thanks for all the forget about it posts i have read the last few days and i have decided to sell it or trade it off
i was only wanting to see it run maybe toy around with it a little, try to gain some knowledge about mainframes
i acquired a box of cables and connectors and two consoles for the system but it is ever evident that even booting this beast up is
a waste of my time but thanks for all the reply's