What series of AS/400 is the 9406 F2?

Question

I am considering the acquisition of an old IBM AS/400 midrange computer. The provider has stated the model is "9406 F2".

I have dived into the AS/400 information provided by IBM in their own websites to no avail. My first thought was to check the Fxx family, but model designations in that line start at F35.

Another candidate I checked was the 6xx line but I have not much information to confirm if it belongs to it. After some time searching in content from other sources, I found a single unit of 9406 F2 being currently sold at ebay (see here). From what I saw at the listing, this F2 complies with the following:

• Is an AS/400e system, prior to e-server and i-series.
• Is a rather big system with about 68+ cm wide, 83+ cm long and 1+ m tall.
• Primary color is black with secondary being blue (I found some other IBM computers having alternatively red decorations instead or blue, or none at all).

The information relative to the system was extracted from the listing and at the time of asking I have no confirmation about it. I need more precise information about the system to study the viability of the operation.

For this reason I would like to ask this community if someone knows/has worked with this system and could help me to properly identify it.

Answer 1

A search of IBM's rather voluminous redbook and redpaper resources shows no F2 model of the 9406 - these start at F35, as you state.

There's only a 9402 F02 model as described in the AS/400 CISC System Builder V1R2-V3R6 redpaper REDP-0042. That has a rather comprehensive overview of AS/400 hardware and options, from introduction up to products announced as of mid-1995.

It was separated from the System Builder document, to keep size down, when the May 2000 edition of the AS/400e one was produced.

From cursory search, the IBM RedBook site has only the AS/400e variant but there's a copy or the CISC one here, at least at the time this answer was posted.

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Based on the link you've now added (see extracted images below), that really looks like a 7xx we had floating around at IBM Software Labs when I worked there a decade or so ago (we used it for developing/testing one of the Tivoli z/OS products which gathered information from various mini- and micro-computer systems, as well as all the relevant mainframe hardware and software as well).

It appears to have the distinctive four-section tower body with the PSU/UPS in the bottom right (looking from the back) and feeding up to both the section above and to the left. You can see the similarity in this YouTube video (at about 4:10 in).

However, given the rather large number of ways you could get to a 7xx configuration (purchase and various upgrade paths), it wouldn't surprise me in the least if this was a configuration that came from a earlier CISC model. If that were the case, the face-plate on the back of the tower is probably irrelevant to the contents of the tower.

I think if you wish to ascertain what you're actually getting for your money, you'll need to get pictures of all the hardware inside the tower, rather than relying on a possibly dubious face-plate.