Remember the big IBM 360 mainframe rescue job? For now, Brexit has ballsed it up – big iron restorers Plans to restore an aged IBM mainframe found in a disused building in Germany are on hold because of struggles to find a way to haul the hardware to the UK. Brexit worries seem to have put the frighteners on haulier companies and the team behind the project are turning to German firms to transport the gear westwards. The …
This post has been deleted by its author
I think the problem is the tail lift, though the weight limit itself shouldn't be a problem these tend to be standard only on non articulated box vehicles. Full size artics are normally expected to be loaded at a dock or by forklift so this does cut down the availability of suitable vehicles, but would two trips in a 18-ton box side blow the budget?
Basically it's just a heavy & fragile load that doesn't come in standard pallet sizes, most of the big UK hauliers will be able to shift this without a problem.
"Basically it's just a heavy & fragile load that doesn't come in standard pallet sizes"
I palletized mine on pallets I borrowed from a hauling company. No, they weren't standard sized, but they were off-the-shelf. The guy I borrowed them from was surprised when I returned them.
They may actually want a haulier that has trucks (of the appropriate capacity) with a truck-mounted forklift..
We've had a couple of deliveries of construction stuff for our house, multiple full pallets of cement and building blocks for instance, and they all came by truck with one of those picking the load off the truck bed and putting it on our garage path.
Trucks carrying those forklifts will probably be curtain-sided, not hard-sided, but as long as there are plenty tiedown attachment points (and they tend to be) I don't see that being a problem.
Last time I moved a Mainframe, I used a 10,000lb payload 26 foot Penski rental with a 3,000lb hydraulic lift on the back. Cost me all of a couple hundred bucks. I did the driving, took four trips, probably could have done it in 3. If I was in a hurry, I could have rented four trucks; I have enough drivers handy.
This is the UK. Anything over 3.5 tonnes gross can be tricky, and I was excluded from that for medical reasons. Above 7.5 tonnes gross and you definitely need the special licence.
Between 3.5 tonnes and 7.5 tonnes an ordinary driving test before 1997 gave you the necessary C1 rating.
When you figure in the insurance and the regular training requirement, I doubt it would be practical.
Even if you specify the weight and have it come through normal hauliers, they will still send it last mile in a box truck that's got a tail lift that's too weak to move it, even if you had to pay extra for the privilege and specify the destination has no unloading facilities.
I had to fork the last machine I had moved like this out with my jcb for this very reason, and very nervous it made me too, as the forks mounts were welded on the week before and the tail lift requirement was paid for because the machine weighed 3t. I should have refused the delivery but the machine cabinet already looked like someone had used it for a game of conkers en route and I just wanted to get it back out their clutches. Once I had unloaded it and it powered up, the driver told me it had fell off the tail lift at the depot testing it when it fell like a stone (but they'd sent it in that vehicle anyway)
If its rare, don't send it general freight logistics, unless each machine is palletised inside a very sturdy protective wood crate... Find someone who will care, and handle it end to end on its trip. If you can't find that someone, be that someone.
But can it run Space Invaders?
When I was at university in the mid-70s, the main machine was a 360/44. Batch processing most of the time, but in the afternoons it ran a timesharing system called RAX.
This predated Space Invaders - and the terminals were all green-screen alphanumeric "VDUs". However there was a moon landing game, where you controlled (I think) vertical and horizontal velocity by manipulating thrust, and the system would give you frequent (textual) updates on altitude, rate and angle of descent, etc.
I don't think I ever landed successfully.
If you can get something into a container, you can move it to pretty much anywhere on earth. But if you have special requirements, as this shipment does, then your options wll be severely limited. And you won't just any charlie behind the wheel or operating the thing.
That said, Germans ship heavy machinery a lot so should be possible to find a suitable company though it won't be cheap.
Loading/unloading a container that's sitting on the ground is not too difficult; it's just a 20cm or so threshold that you need to negotiate. So, a long enough ramp or a couple of pallet movers can do that job. But getting the loaded container(s) full of System/360.on and off the truck would probably require a more serious crane than those you might find on such a truck itself.
When we moved we would be in temporary housing for a few months, so we moved the essential stuff there by box van, stuffed the rest in a 20' and 10' container and had them moved to a temporary storage location. That crane on the truck was straining to lift the 20' one (which may well have been caused by books being a fair part of its contents). I don't want to gamble on such a crane being able to lift a container loaded with some big iron gear.
The benefit of using containers is that they can load a big piece, tetris all kinds of boxes and smaller stuff around it, then the next big piece, etc. Plus they can construct a supporting frame in place for the larger/higher pieces wedging them against the container walls. Have the container delivered, take a couple of days putting the gear into it (our packing the boxes, and the boxes into the containers for the move was done over two weeks or so), then have the shipper pick it up, possibly with the assistance of an auxiliary crane. That way the activities that require the most hands, brains and dedication can be done during a weekend, while the shipper drops off and picks up the container on weekdays with just one of the team supervising.
The host of the Salvage Hunters show on Discovery.
I don't know how much the lift of his car can handle, but he do know how to secure fragile cargo.
He probably have to take two trips, but if he can take a stop or two along the way to buy some old industrial light fittings, he'll probably jump at the opportunity.
The Reg is getting as bad as the BBC in finding things to blame on Brexit. The guys are having difficulty getting a haulier and there is no mention in the article that any of them blamed Brexit. The only mention comes from the author of this article "Brexit worries seem to have put the frighteners on haulier companies..". It's a poor world we live in when you cannot have any faith in politicians and even less in reporters.
I agree. I desperately try to avoid any stories that involve Brexit or politics on this site now as to be honest I would just love one place I visit for IT news to be devoid of all of it. Also, people are foaming at the mouth about it, refuse to see the bigger picture, especially in the comments and more often than not it tends to be those who are obsessively remain (I acknowledge there are obsessive leavers, they are an exception, neither are acceptable).
My interest was piqued though in wondering what possible reason Brexit could have caused an issue for this project and was left wanting. Brexit hasn't happened yet. You can't blame it. There is no reason for the headline at all. I despair when this site gets biased articles.
It seems a pretty fair comment. Up until last Friday the Brexit date was fixed to Halloween. The French Ambassador, on St Crispin's Day, seemed to be why we didn't get a definite date fixed until Monday. Operation Brock was still being set up at the weekend, to use the M20 to park-up HGVs facing border delays.
Anyone who doesn't think hauliers were worried is crazy.
> Anyone who doesn't think hauliers were worried is crazy.
Ahem, they already knew how to handle it so were not worried. Everythings been planned for months and months and known about for 3 bloody years, all they are waiting for is the actual "yes go ahead" with plan A or plan B!
Which can piss them off as it scuppers proper planning.
If you are in the business of shipping stuff about and dont know how to do that from a 3rd country after 3 years of knowing that you'd need to know how to do it I suggest a different career. Logistics isnt for you. If this were the Apprentice I'd have heads roll if they couldn't explain to me what the hell they had been doing over the last 3 years of work completely ignoring the fact that we may need to handle a no deal brexit as like with any other non EU country.
Its like having someone booked to install a boiler in your house only for them to turn up without any tools because even though you booked 3 months ago they had no idea that they would need to install a boiler. Then you ask them why they drove 70 miles to get to you, with a boiler in their van but no tools and didnt think that that would be an issue till they knocked your door. Instead of accepting blame for their own obvious incompetence they try to blame the smartphone they got the job order on. You catch a glance at the screen and it clearly says "boiler install" and again you ask the legitimate question of why they didnt plan on bringing their tools.
Presumably the reason it was advertised was because the disposal cost would have been pretty high as well. Partly because someone would have to transport it, even if it was being done in Germany.
Their blog states that they aren't actually sure what they've bid on. Entering a 4500 Euro bid under such circumstances is odd behaviour at best.
Guessing the reason it was described as a Puma computer is because it has a Puma logo sticker on it. Can only see it on the high-res copy on their blog here: https://ibms360.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/DSC_0002.jpg
I mean good luck to them. But pretty sure someone saw them coming here.
Incidentally there have been parts of aircraft - including Concorde occasionally - on ebay. Other than looking at them and going "ah lovely piece of history" you're paying a lot of money to take something nobody else wants off their hands, i.e. they are disposing of it - at your expense.
You nay have a point, but as there are very few operating System 360 or 370 systems left in the world, the chance of obtaining a near complete example of either is a chance to be jumped at.
Unlike your example of Concord, which would be almost impossible to return to operational status (see the trials of getting Vulcan XH558 to fly again), there is a chance that one or both of these systems may live again.
Both 360 and 370 were hugely influential, both in architectural and construction terms for the whole of the computing industry, introducing the concept of documented near-open architectures, plug compatible peripherals, solid-state electronics, common instruction set across all models, and introducing the concept of backward compatibility that even extends in some degree to the latest z15 systems today.
You could argue that this is all available under emulation, but until you are in the presence of one of these things quietly rumbling away in a machine room, you don't really appreciate how big they were!
What I'm surprised about is that IBM Germany of UK have not themselves provided any resource, as even they don't have a 360 or 370 in their Hursley (UK) computing museum (not sure about Germany). Mind you, even to them these machines are ancient history, as I doubt that any hardware engineers from this era are still working for IBM. I only have vague memories of working on these types of machines from my time at Durham University, using both an System 360/65 and a System 370/168, and I'm getting towards the end of my working life.
IBM Hursley is/was a development lab. and thus is not under the IBM UK company, but reports directly to the US holding company. The full company name is IBM UK Laboratories Ltd.
The Hursley site is not full any way you look at it. Some space is leased out to bits of IBM UK (for example, the remains of the UK Software Centre and parts of the TSS Hardware Front Office) is in Hursley. This has happened as other IBM locations in Basingstoke and the South East have been closed.
UK CICS support and training, and some other Z Series support and training is done at Hursley, although I believe that the main CICS development was transferred to Toronto some time back. I think there is also some Storwize/Spectrum Virtualize development still done there, but there is now very little in development work done anywhere in IBM in the UK nowadays.
I also think that Hursley may be one of IBM's UK cloud centres.
> I only have vague memories of working on these types of machines from my time at Durham University, using both an System 360/65 and a System 370/168
In the early 1970s Durham University used to make use of Newcastle University's IBM 360/67 which ran Michigan terminal System (MTS) time sharing. The link between Newcastle University and Durham University was described as costing "a diplomat's ransom"! But presumably you are referring to a slightly later era?
Was it a 360/67? I was at Durham between 1978 and 1981, and then worked at Newcastle Polytechnic (also a part of NUMAC - Northumbrian Universities Multiple Access Computer) from 1982 until 1987.
When I was there, the 360 was running batch workloads under MVS or one of IBMs other batch OSs, and MTS was running on the 370 doing both batch and interactive work. I only wrote a single program that was executed on the 360 as an exercise in the IBM JCL in the computing course I was on.
While I was at the Poly, the 370 was replaced with an Amdahl 5730 (I think, I might be wrong on the model number) over one weekend. It was painfully slow on the Friday, and quick on the Monday. I don't know how difficult the work actually was, but I'm thinking that they kept the same FEPs and DASD strings, just replacing the CPU, memory and swap cabinets. I'm sure it was not that simple, but I just don't know the details.
Durham also got their own IBM 4370 (again exact model number may not be right) air-cooled CMOS system sometime in the mid '80s, also running MTS.
Unlike your example of Concord, which would be almost impossible to return to operational status (see the trials of getting Vulcan XH558 to fly again), there is a chance that one or both of these systems may live again.
Whilst the British Concordes were left to rot outside, or had the wings chopped off to transport them to museums, the French have kept one of theirs in a hanger in flight condition, regularly running up the hydraulics systems to keep them in order. One day they'll fly her again to make one last attempt to steal the glory of this mainly British technology.
When I was at Uni (back when dinosaurs roamed the earth) and later, for trade shows, we used household movers (in the US, Allied Van Lines, and their ilk).
They used to have special divisions for moving heavy and fragile goods, primarily for deliveries to end users (we got a used CDC CYBER74) and to trade shows.
Might be worth a call to the local movers to see if they can handle it. Agree that the liftgate is a problem, as trailers usually don't have a power source for them. But movers also have low trailers and ramps which, as I recall, handled the CDC without a problem. Bearing rollers and Johnson bars did the rest of the moving.
If there's any way to load the gear from a loading dock, you'll have a much easier time and you'll only need a forklift.
If the tail lift is the issue would it be possible to load everything into an iso container on the ground (Small step up but not as big as trying to lift into the back of a truck *) and then crane the whole thing onto the back of a truck?
* from what I remember from the blog they had to negotiate some steps etc to get the units out of the building... and most of the kit is on wheels.
A charity I've helped out with a few times, the Turing Trust reconditions old donated computers, printers etc. and ships them to African schools.
https://turingtrust.co.uk/
The process involves getting a containerload of gear together, reformatted, checked and catalogued and then on a Friday a truck with a HIAB crane arrives and drops a full-sized shipping container in a yard next to the storage area. A group of volunteers load the container over the weekend using pallet trucks and a ramp (supplied by the container hire company if needed) then once it's full the doors are closed, the HIAB truck returns on the Monday and lifts the container onto its back and drives off.
Typically there's eight to ten tonnes of weight in the container when it's ready to ship, the truck cranes are rated a bit higher than that.
I think the problem's trying to get a box truck to move this. If I were faced with this problem I'd rent a container and fork lift and load the kit myself, adding bracing and tie-downs as necessary.
This is how people move house internationally. Its how you manage weird (non-standard) loads.
Yup, moved from the UK -> US and back again with all my stuff via container shipping. On the way out used lift vans and a shared container (don't do this if the other half of the container is subject to a divorce settlement), on the way back I needed a full container - '65 Mustangs take a bit of space.
This is a job for a company specialized in machinery relocations (Think hauling a bridgeport knee mill or bigger). I don't know how many of them exist in the UK, but they should be pretty common in Germany. The relevant search term would be "Industrieumzüge". These are companies that have forklifts,trucks with loading ramps and experience in moving stuff that's too heavy or large for a standard shipping company to handle.
The last 360 I set up (a 2025), the processing unit alone required 7.5kva of 208v 4 wire 3 phase. Add the requirements for all the stuff you want to connect to it when drawing up your power needs. Don't forget your backup power ... and line conditioning. These things HATE power fluctuations. They hate flaky grounding, too, so don't skimp there ... I built my machineroom/museum/mausoleum/morgue with an Ufer ground, just to be sure. It's probably overkill, but ...
What's the heat output of the above CPU? Glad you asked ... try 21,000 BTU (about 5.25 kcal), so when planning your retro data center don't forget about the electricity your AC, humidifier and air handling equipment will need ... It likes to live at about 63F (17C) and ~50% humidity, so again don't skimp!
We ran a nationwide realtime parts and accounting system on one of those beasts, with 20+ online branches and dealers all online at a mix of 1200 and 2400 bps. CICS 1.3 or1.4 with a home brewed ISAM file system, everything written is IBM Assembler. Those were the days.....
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
