System/34 Archives

Guru: The OpenAI API – The Easy Way

May 13, 2024 Dan Darnell

When it comes to programming in a particular programming language there is what you can do and what you can do easily. I use RPG every day and have done so since the System/34 days. I love the language but I’ve also picked up other programming languages over time because sometimes RPG isn’t the right tool for the job.

I’ve been using IBM EGL – Enterprise Generation Language – to create IBM i applications since 2009. IBM made a push at one time to entice RPG programmers to pick up the language and toolset (Rational Business Developer) for modernization …
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Guru: Using Mixed Lists To Add “Data Structures” To CL Commands

January 15, 2024 Ted Holt

I can’t remember the last time I worked on an RPG program that had no data structures, but it was probably on a System/34. Everybody uses data structures, and with good reason – they are as handy as a pocket. When writing CL commands, it is possible to include parameters that are formatted as data structures. IBM calls them mixed lists. In the following paragraphs, I show how this is accomplished.

You may not realize it, but you have used IBM-supplied commands that have mixed-list parameters. For example, the Copy File (CPYF) command has several such parameters: FROMKEY, TOKEY, INCCHAR, …
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Talking System Architecture With The Frank Soltis

June 21, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

In a very funny way, the System/38 and its AS/400 and following progeny are the product of coincidence and brilliance. In 1962, had Frank Soltis taken that summer job at an aerospace company that he wanted to work for in Southern California, first of all, he might have ended up with a tan, and second of all, whatever followed the System/34 almost certainly would not have had single level storage, much less the architecture that we still know today, in modified form, as the IBM i platform.

Lucky for us that Frank’s father, who ran a parts distribution operation for …
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Don’t Be A Blowhard

March 22, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

One of the things that made the AS/400 a great system, as well as the System/36 and the System/32 and System/34 before it, was that there were entry machines that had enough oomph to support the data processing and storage needs of small businesses within a reasonable budget and in a system that didn’t need a datacenter or even a data closet. They could be tucked under a desk, or left to run beside them.

Way back in the dawn of time, there were special machines, even smaller than the original AS/400-B10 and AS/400 -B20, that were even smaller and …
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The Distinguished Professionals Of IBM i

February 17, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

We use the term legacy a lot in the IBM midrange and mainframe markets, and not necessarily in the good way we talk about political leaders or business executives or sports stars all leaving a legacy behind of their body of work. I use the term when it means something precise – legacy applications, for instance, are the ones that originated back in time and that have not been modernized in any substantial way because perhaps they don’t need to be.

I prefer the term vintage when I am talking about hardware and software releases because that conveys a …
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Sometimes Even DIYers Need A Little Help

October 7, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

If there ever was a crowd that liked to do it themselves, it is the IBM midrange. Well, probably more like half to two-thirds of the IBM midrange. But you know what I mean.

These companies started programming way back in the 1970s with one of Big Blue’s System/3 or System 32, or System/34 machines, and moved on to the System/38 or the System/36. The former launched in 1978, a decade after the System/3 that started it all in Rochester, Minnesota, and the latter came out in 1983, five years before the AS/400. The machines had sophisticated batch and interactive …
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Wanted: Exciting New Publicist For Boring Old Server

March 18, 2019 Alex Woodie

You don’t need a marketing guru to tell you the IBM i server has a publicity problem. Outside the cloistered midrange community, nobody knows that it even exists. Even some of the companies that run their businesses on it don’t know it exists. Unicorns and leprechauns, which don’t exist, have a greater mindshare than the IBM i server. And the funny thing is, that’s exactly how it was all designed.

According to industry analyst Rob Enderle, the IBM i server is a world leader in one computing category: boredom.

“You put it in, you leave it alone, and it just …
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Are You Experienced? IBM i Users Weigh In

March 18, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

We spend a lot of time here at The Four Hundred thinking about the vintage of the hardware, operating systems, and applications running on the IBM i platform and its forbears. But we are also concerned, as you know, with the vintage of the people who are running and programming the systems out there in the IBM midrange installed base.

It is hard to get any quantifiable data on the people out there running the platforms – and we thank you, as loyal readers of this publication for several decades now for being in this market for even more decades …
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Guru: Why And How Not to Use The Aretha Franklin I/O Method

March 4, 2019 Ted Holt

The Aretha Franklin I/O Method is still used heavily in RPG shops even though a better method has existed for decades. In the following paragraphs, I explain the Aretha Franklin I/O Method, tell you why you should not use it, and show you the superior method.

First, let me give credit where credit is due. Although I had been using the Aretha Franklin I/O Method since my System/34 days, I never knew it by that name. Then Dan Cruikshank (now retired) of IBM informed me of this terminology. Here’s how it works:

Assume an RPG program that needs data from …
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