Rescuing one of the first IBM AS/400, a 9406-B30 from 1988
Introduction
For those who have been following my blog for a few years, you know that I have a deep interest in IBM AS/400 systems. I have already restored a 9401-150 and written extensively about these machines. So when I spotted a listing on LeBonCoin for an AS/400 from 1988, I knew I had to try to get it.
The backstory of how this machine ended up on LeBonCoin is a chain of lucky events. The previous owner of the house was quite old and was selling the property. He gave away everything he wanted to get rid of to a second-hand goods dealer for free. The dealer tried to find a buyer for the AS/400 but had no luck. Nobody was interested. So he contacted a metal scrapper he knew, and proposed him to take the machine for scrapping, to extract the gold from its components. The metal scrapper agreed, but happened to have another friend in the second-hand goods business who advised him to try selling it online first before destroying it. That is how the listing ended up on LeBonCoin.
I was the first person to contact the seller, less than a minute after the listing went up. In the following hours, multiple companies reached out to the seller to buy the machine and tear it down for parts to resell. Luckily, the seller reserved it for me because I wanted to save the machine and restore it, this was important to the previous owner. From there the deal was simple: we had five days to come pick it up. After that, it would be scrapped for metal.
During our conversation I was sent photos of the office in its original state before anything was thrown away. This looked like an opportunity of a lifetime, but I really wasn’t sure of what will still be there.
| The office in the basement | The machine |
|---|---|
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Unfortunately, not everything had survived. The metal scrapper already threw away a laser printer and an AS/400 9401-170 before we arrived. A painful loss, but at least the B30 and all its documentation should still be there.
Five days. That was all the time I had to organise a 800 km round trip from Rennes to the Paris suburbs, rent a truck, and haul back a 780 lbs mainframe. I did not hesitate for a second. When I explained my plan to my partner, being the awesome person she is, she proposed taking a day off to come help me on this adventure.
Planning the rescue
My partner and I both took a day off work. We rented a truck (which was absolutely essential for the entire operation) and set off early in the morning towards Paris. The drive from Rennes takes about four hours.
During all the trip I imagined all the scenarios, what will we find? Is the machine in a good state? Will there be other things to pick up? I had no idea what condition the machine would be in. The old owner had told the metal scrapper that the system was working the last time it was powered on, back in the early 2000s. It had not been turned on since. It was sold strictly as-is.
Arriving on site
When we arrived at the house, a paris suburb pavillon from the 70s with an underground garage with a very steep entrance. The first thing we saw was the massive beige machine, sitting outside the garage door, in the open air. It had been left there for four days in the rain.
At first glance, there was no visible water damage, but this was far from ideal to say the least for a machine built in 1988. The rack had been rolled out of an underground garage and parked on the driveway next to the entrance.
Then we went inside the former office where the machine had been stored for decades. What we found there was staggering.
| Left | Back wall |
|---|---|
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A treasure trove of documentation and media
The room contained:
- Almost 200 magnetic tapes in 9-track reel format. A few of them were IBM system installation tapes, some contained data, and others held the source code of the software this company had developed.
- Several dozen IBM documentation binders: the original manuals shipped with the machine.
- Custom application documentation from the previous owner, detailing the financial and bookkeeping software they had built for business end users.
- An IBM 5291 twinax terminal station with its screen, controller, and keyboard.
- One issue of “Les cahiers de l’AS/400”, a French trade publication dedicated to the platform.
- Various cables and peripherals related to the system, twinax cables, a Telsat modem
We were very glad we had rented a truck.
The 780 lbs problem
We had the truck, we had the will, and we had everything ready. Now we just needed to get a 780 lbs rack into the truck.
The machine was sitting on its original casters at the bottom of a sloped driveway leading down to the underground garage. Even with three people (my partner, myself, and the metal scrapper who was on site) we could not push the rack up the slope. It simply would not budge.
We had no choice but to partially disassemble the rack to reduce its weight. Before removing anything, we spent time carefully photographing every cable connection and noting the position of each component. These machines are not the kind of hardware where you can just unplug things and hope for the best. Every cable routing and card placement matters.
| Left | Back wall |
|---|---|
| |
Once we had removed enough components from the rack chassis to make it manageable, we were finally able to push the lightened chassis up the slope and into the truck. It was still extremely heavy even when the chassis was empty.
Loading and the long drive home
From there, we spent roughly three hours loading everything into the truck: the tapes, the binders, the terminal, the cables, the components we had removed from the rack, and finally the rack chassis itself.
By the time everything was secured, it was almost 5PM. We had a four-hour drive ahead of us. The trip went well and we were careful to drive very slowly on the speed bumps to avoid shaking things too much in the trunk.
We arrived home around 9PM, quite exhausted from this trip. My partner and I unloaded the rack chassis together and moved it into the garage that same evening. We left everything else in the truck: the tapes, the binders, the terminal, all the loose components.
I spent the entire next morning emptying the truck in our appartment living room, and then returned the rental. Only then could I finally take stock of what we had actually rescued. Our living room looked like this just after the operation:
It really was time to sort, clean and store everything better now.
| Binders of documentation | One box of 9tracks reel tapes |
|---|---|
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What we recovered: an early AS/400 9406-B30
This machine is an IBM AS/400 9406-B30. What makes it even more remarkable is its manufacturing date. The date stamps on various internal components all read July 1988, one month before the official public announcement of the AS/400 platform in August 1988.
Serial number and early production
The serial number of the central processing unit is S44-B2084. Depending on whether IBM started numbering at S44-B0000 or S44-B1000, this unit is somewhere among the first 1,000 to 2,000 machines ever produced. It is, at the very least, an extremely early production unit.
| B30 | Serial number |
|---|---|
 |  |
No AS/400 branding
One of the most striking details is that the outer rack cabinet does not carry AS/400 branding except on the central processing unit. It is branded as a “9309 2”, which is the IBM rack enclosure designation. This makes sense for a unit manufactured before the official product launch. The branding and marketing materials may not have been finalised yet when this machine left the factory.
| 9309 2 | front switch |
|---|---|
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The software story
From the documentation and tapes, I was able to piece together the history of this machine. The previous owner was a company that developed financial and bookkeeping software for business end users. The 150 magnetic tapes include not only the IBM OS/400 system installation media, but also the source code of their application and their clients’ data. The 8-inch floppies also contain parts of their source code.
This is a complete time capsule of a late-1980s French software company creating software for AS/400.
What’s next
I have not powered on the machine yet. Given that it sat in the rain for four days and has not been turned on since the early 2000s, I want to take every precaution. My plan is to follow the same restoration process I used for my 9401-150: full disassembly, thorough cleaning of every component, inspection for corrosion or damage, and careful reassembly before attempting the first boot.
For now it is stored in the garage until I clean every component and restore what needs to.
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The 9406-B30 is a significantly older and rarer machine than the 9401-150 I restored previously. Getting it back to a working state will be a longer and more delicate process, but that is exactly what makes it worth doing.
I will document the full restoration in upcoming articles. Stay tuned.