IBM Gets AS/400 Running On PlayStation

TomPee writes "Hackers may have oiled the rails for Linux fans eager to run their favourite Penguin-fronted operating system on Xbox, but that's nothing compared to IBM's latest in-house project, according to Gamesindustry.biz: running the AS/400 enterprise operating system on a humble PlayStation. Now I'm only wondering: what will be the practical use of this ?" According to another account from News.com.au, which non-specifically mentions 'PlayStation', it may be that IBM are working on the PS2, and not the PSOne, as the newer article claims.

Comments

In other news

[nelsonal]

This morning officials from NetBSD has announced a port for the emulated AS/400 on PS2 hardware.

Perhaps a real use.

[shadwwulf]

This reminds me of this a previous Slashdot post.

Perhaps now the whackjobs of the world will have a reason to stockpile consoles other than needing their fix of Final Fantasy.

Just a thought...

wait...

[kevin lyda]

ok, first ibm support linux. then they port as/400 to the playstation. meanwhile sun is pissing on linux in cowardly ways.

ibm is supposed to be full of boring suits. sun is supposed to have the hackers. it was all so much simpler back in 1993, what went wrong?

Re:wait...

[IM6100]

It's not that complex:

The boring suits have decided to commercialize on 'the hackers' and therefore have adopted sort of a 'cool' sheen. The hackers at Sun are getting ever closer to retirement, plus they don't take software that runs on unreliable cheap PeeCee hardware** very seriously. Plus, Linux threatens a hell of a lot of cool technology in Sun's Solaris flagship, Linux is still sort of an enhanced MS_DOS compared to Solaris.

(** This is a point worth considering. I, personally have been getting more and more involved with classic Sun Sparc hardware. There's just no comparison in, say, the incredible at-all-levels-refined engineering in the SparcStation 5 and the kind of 'stamp out crap, but do it expensively to impress the suits' engineering that went into even the most expensive servers from Compaq.)

Woohoo!

[TheSHAD0W]

We C0B0L programmers aren't obsolete after all!

Big deal

[AtariAmarok]

Wake me up when you can my Gameboy to emulate a Cray. :)

How about PS2 on PS2?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about getting an IBM PS2 to run Sony PS2 games? Now that is the challenge.

The beginning...

[American AC in Paris]

"Wh--yes, sir? No, no--I mean, yes, very busy, sir! Very busy indeed! That box? It's a--well, yes, it is a PlayStation, sir. Oh, I see, your son has one, that's, uh, nice...yes...well, it's...it's a...a test machine! Yes! You see, I'm porting...uh...AS/400 to it (shut up, Bob...) because...um...think of all the young kids we could get hooked on AS/400 programming, sir! (Shut up, Bob...)"

"...sir? No, it's just me and Bob here, a sort of pet project we like to work on every now and...you...you what?...Sir, that's...you're giving us how many people to work on this?"

The Register link

[$exyNerdie]

IBM gets AS/400 running on PSone

Why this project exists

[regen]

What happened was an exec at IBM told the techies to get OS/400 runing on a PS/2. The techies misunderstood and thought he meant the PS2. The rest is history.

Conversation with IBM sales

[MarkGriz]

Customer: Hi, I'm interested in licensing AS/400 for my Fortune 500 company.
IBM: Yes, sir. What server are you looking at to run it? We have a great deal on our iSeries 890 midrange systems, starting at about $350,000.
Customer: Oh, no thanks. I just picked up a Playstation at a yard sale for 20 bucks.

Re:Is this

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

AS/400 is the HARDWARE.

The reporter was a console-guy, so he can be forgiven. What IBM has done is get the OS/400 Operating System ported.

Are some big companies gearing up to take on MS

[SmallFurryCreature]

• IBM supports linux, a direct competitor to MS on low-end servers and maybe in the future on the desktop
• Sony releases a linux version for the PS2
• All the big japanese electronics firms work together on a linux project
• IBM puts their mainframe software, a very stready earner on PS.
• IBM and sony work together on PS3
• IBM delivers the chips for apple
• Apple uses BSD
• ?????? Of course all of this doesn't have to mean a thing, but if you want you can read into this a serious contented to the Wintel domination.

  A living room systeem designed by Sony, on IBM hardware with the solidity of AS/400 (mainframes did things in reliabilty and security we can only dream of in our so called modern OSes) and the openess of linux. Perhaps even taken a few UI lessons from Apple? I would buy one that is for sure.

  Oh well a guy can dream can't he?

IBM's secret plan to take over the world.

[DavidBrown]

Given that OS/400 is usually found on enterprise servers, and - with apologies to Al Yankovich - about as useful to gamers as JPEGs to Helen Keller, the project is never likely to make it out of the Rochester lab, but has been undertaken anyway as part of research associated with IBM's "CELL" project - jointly underway with Toshiba and Sony to develop processors for entertainment applications. (from the article).

Maybe the idea here is that IBM is working on a robust OS and networking system and maybe the hardware for use in future Sony platforms (PS3, anyone?) and has done this as a demonstration of what they can do. If they can make it work with the PSOne, they can make it work with anything.

It's kind of karmic, the PS3 also being the PS/3 and all.

In the name of God, why?

[TwistedKestrel]

Imagine someone writing games for OS/400 on this:

PLYGM *PLYR(PLYR1) *GM(MGS3)

(It's been a while, my 'syntax' could be wrong)

What really scares me is *if* IBM decided to let people play around with this OS/400, and the general geek public started playing around with it, we'd have a whole new perversion of the english language, a million times worse than l337 speak.

Example:

LTGMR1: HY, HW R Y DNG?
CLGY: NT T BD, Y?
LTGMR1: I JST GT LTMA MCM TDY, T KCKS SS

Do you have any idea of what they're saying? Neither will you!