Powering up the IBM Z890 mainframe and teardown - (PWJ148)

[Music] [Applause] welcome to a new episode of playing the choke this time something I already had before a mainframe from IBM but this time it's a little bit different I don't want to take it apart I want to turn it on that's something new okay let's see how that works I must say I don't have a lot of experience with mainframe in fact no experience at all and I have never turned on one of these and well let's see what happens it should be complete it has two large power connectors that's three face 16 and each normally there are there is a 32 M connector on this machine but 16 M is enough because the maximum power consumption is about 4 point 2 kilowatts so the set 890 which we have here is a relatively small machine it only has one CPU book that's the part here it has base up to 4 books but with more than one book it would be a set 990 and that's a totally different price range then we have here two IBM ThinkPad notebooks they are two of them for redundancy so I think because everything in this system is redundant from the power supply even CPUs it's more than one chip okay let's lock it in and just if you are wondering yes both go to the same power line which is not recommended but it works alright at the moment we have a green light here on the front and the same green light blinking in the back I don't know if blinking is normal or not but well let's turn it on and see what happens next so the notebook has turned on at least the first one some fans start spinning no book tells me to check the date so I think the system battery is probably low [Music] that should do the trick [Music] [Applause] or as to war server for e-business yes that was a time when I've been tried to market os/2 instead of Windows well I think they still use it but well only on this niche product [Music] so we have 1.5 gigabyte of disk space in this laptop of course [Music] how much RAM I missed that [Music] oh there is even a hard disk D which also has 1.5 gig okay maybe there's a 3 or 10 gigabyte Drive in the laptop we may have a problem on the back power supply it's constantly blinking and clicking and also the light here doesn't seem right because on the front side that's already green steady green so we probably have a defective power supply here ok there is not much happening on the notebook here by the way that's the standard username and passwords you can find them in the manuals it's nothing secret okay it does something seems it does a reboot tries to do something with the graphic card okay we got graphics or well at least we got Windows without graphics and then it puts again but in a different resolution Pentium 4 with 2 gigahertz so it seems it has to reboot to change the screen resolution okay why not maybe that's one of the benefits of os/2 and there is absolutely nothing on the second notebook here maybe that one is powered from the backside who knows that's the reason why it doesn't work but I think one working should be enough I am initialization is in progress okay that sounds good okay IBM license agreement there is nothing you can click and I know that because yes I started it before just to see if it's worth to make a video or not and that disappears after a while by itself there is no okay button no nothing you just have to wait and just in case this system looks familiar to you to set 890 it's exactly the same system as the other guy took home that kid that bought a mainframe computer you have probably seen one or two videos of him crew Kowski what's the name I think so I hope I spelled that right yeah he bought such a machine for I don't know a couple of hundred dollars and he brought it home and made it work well I don't know exactly what's happening but some other blowers just came up and the second notebook now also makes a picture on the screen so it's not just a waiting license code stuff oh I got a fan error on the second notebook okay which fan doesn't work don't know [Music] [Music] it sounds a bit like an airplane [Music] okay something changed we have a logon screen and a super right status indicator and we have hardware my sections blinking so let's try service and serve mode yeah seems to work okay then so as far as I understand it we have to select our machine here maybe it's possible to have more machines in this [Music] administration's software thing and we can click the hardware messages and we have a power problem yes I know that that's why he's blinking how failing nine services required request service and if this machine is set up properly it also has network connection directly to IBM and we can request the service well let's try that for IBM service called mama mama a phone number better than serial number okay that's it it doesn't call automatically okay well it doesn't have a modem and if it has it's not plugged in there only connections I made is power right now okay all squished what's that activate so I think I probably have to put it in service mode no okay new books I'm looking for the power on our hearings CPC recovery power on the system power okay I just first have to select my system again that thank you just select system power and we have the possibility to power it on or off our of in progress duration time one hour 15 minutes zero seconds well fortunately I can tell you it doesn't take that long it takes about well a couple of minutes [Music] okay power-on is complete took five and a half minutes instead of one hour fifteen but I think that's just the worst case scenario probably with all the options and everything but okay powerful well I just clicked one of the right because here which is this one service required state [Music] it tells me services required for the following reasons and more power I think that's because everything is now running on only one power cord or one power supply then the primary as a that's the service element that's the notebook here loss of communication with alternate by that it's SES because the second notebook has no power so they cannot communicate and the service net law is in an mode so that's probably not redundant okay there's not much I can do against it because I don't have a power supply okay I select CPC here select checkout tests it's always good to Iran's own tests can vary between one and a half and three hours I don't think I will spend that much time it seems it's data power on reset right now in the meantime let's have a look what is all inside this cabinet here so here we have our supplies that's the input cable input connector goes over here distribution unit all this collectors here that's only for power here's something similar that's one of the bulk power regulators which is enabled that's good because the other one doesn't light green then we have a processing unit book so it's not the CPU because it's not a central processor anywhere many processors that work together so they call it a processor unit another central processing unit the whole module here is called book because well it's in the Shelf like a book maybe then we have two notebooks it already looks like on the ISS they have 80 of them on board we only have two and I have a little bit less of the captain tape then that's the thick cable see if I come down from the CPU we have three of them and they connect this I okay chill with all the i/o cards and we have one which to loopback connectors the others then we have something that looks like fiber that's also a look like a collector now we see the laser lights yes you can see it but firelight light here so this active then we have something similar that's also an optical interface more optical interfaces here you see something here No and the same this side oh there is something so we have here hiccup a dissonant okay with old optical connectors it's cold that's [Music] Parliament if I comb is fiber collection another Gigabit Ethernet fast ethernet that means only convert to the megabyte yeah I think that's it so everything will be connected here with optical interfaces of all kinds let's see what the backside as for us on the backside we have the same power supply arrangement one difference is from this just blinking a bit silly that one is also blinking that shouldn't be that no the yellow light is normal then we have the backside of that book that's the DC convertors the CPU module for the CPU book there's some IO called space which is seems to be on populated at the moment and then that's where the blower are two of them or four and there is more IO space which is at the moment completely empty okay I just missed the end of the power on reset or power reset it took eight minutes of the seven that it displayed now check out test in progress activation successful okay whatever it activates it is successful that's nice I think it does it activates the partitions so that's a concept here you can make like virtual machines you can use single CPU cores and parts of the memories and create an independent machine called the partition so I hope I get that right if not please correct me in the comments and that makes it possible to run completely different operating system so at the moment I think there are two it's set OS or Linux and you can have one partition roaming seto as the other partition run in Linux you can also make one partition with all the CPUs and all the memory to create a huge powerful machine or well whatever you need duration time one hour and 24 forty-two minutes loading test programs that's new didn't see that before it seems at the moment we have four partitions possible and it loads test programs to all of them also does a lot here of the hard drive of the notebook so it seems it's loading the programs from the notebook to the processor here saving print offer that means loading more test programs yeah I think we'll stop depth in the mean time all the yellow lights here has turned into green lights no if they all have been clean before now there were certainly some yellow ones maybe we have blazing light right of visible Pelham No doesn't seem so or it's in a wavelength my camera cannot see but we did see that one yes what I can see it yes I can see it with the naked eye it's a red laser and on camera it's a violet laser that means it has a white quantity of infrared okay still testing okay I think there's not much more I can do with this machine because it doesn't even have a harddrive attached I cannot install any software and I don't have any software so let's be brutal pull the emergency brake [Music] silence nice and because many of you are certainly thinking hey what's inside okay let's have a look [Music] and just in case you are wondering yes I did unplug the power supply from the mains just for safety reasons I mean we have I think it's a 320 C boss here and I don't really want to touch that so unscrew is coming out the other one is retained okay why not so now we can slide out that CPU book and the idiot with the Lamborghini is turning its circles it sounds like a racing ground outside here sometimes okay how have you made that be think it's 18 kilograms to sticker on it that could be okay and that's how the back plane it's just a big large connector and here we have some grills where the fans are underneath you can see it a little bit some bit of the fan yes and everything else is just empty because that's a 890 another 990 and in the 990 we have up to four of these books okay and that's the book let's remove the cover and don't judge the book by its cover well I haven't worked with one of those before so I think we have two handles so let's just try to remove that whatever that is Oh looks like memory can you see that memory modules inside yes I think it's clearly visible okay and how to get these memories oh yes here is memory 16 gig that's certainly extremely expensive there is no way to expand that without the screwdriver okay let's add it to the side well I hope it's a little bit less complicated than it looks let's start here we have some Torx screws to extend I think that throw it away that helps okay first pot comes off it's not that bad it's only eight screws okay I can live with that yeah it's mostly empty I've just opened the memory books here yeah it's memory inside what is their price so what kind of memory do we have are they so good are they what already not a soul route to the port no no no it's some kind of circuit but they don't have this levers to lever it out so I need my own lever here probably it will break because it's probably not a circuit looks ugly okay yeah I see it now so it's some kind of circuit but it's also soldiered it's better push it back and hope I didn't harm anything so but well we don't care let me see if I can get that on camera you can see that oh no it looks like a socket but there is clearly some solder down here so they it seems they put them in and then let them run through through an oven but well there is it's certainly super reliable you never have problem with the contact here but if one of these modules fail you have to replace the entire box hmm maybe that's the reason why it's screwed together here we have some rubbers that push everything down so yes it's a 16 gigabyte memory box that can't be changed okay why not okay let's move to the CPU which is of course here oh and it's still warm this CPU has a power consumption of about 450 watts and that's one of the lowest because all the previous models of these set systems add up to 1,000 watt per CPU chip here but chip is not the right name because it's a multi chip module they call it MCM and what we have here is a lot of capacitors we got a four thousand seven hundred microfarads each 6.3 volts so that's a lot of micro farad's and we have the same amount oh yes about the same amount here then we have this chip capacitors here and I think from the size they are certainly hundred microfarad or maybe even five hundred 470 so yes something about that and there's a lot of them then our smaller capacitors to filter out even higher frequency disturbances and that's here that's the temperature probe and as you see it actually has three connectors but only two are connected because there are three independent temperature sensors inside here and for redundancy yes they have three outputs so why they only needed two is not clear because I have here a similar sensor from another system so that goes in here up to the rim here and also this one also has three separate pairs of wire all right a brown and the white red brown white yes it's the same but this one goes to one connector well I'm not sure if all three are connected but I think if they make three sensors they will also use it and here in this case they only use two of them well because it's a low-cost machine and with low cost I mean it only costs maybe half a million or a million I don't know what the actual price was so let's remove that heat sink though that comes off quite easily come that front here okay and it doesn't have any conventional heat compound it looks like it's just a drop of silicon oil it's a very thin layer here just a little bit of greasy so well it's a huge area so they probably don't need a lot of any compound okay let's see if we can get further into that block just look at this massive backplate here ask whose are numbered one two three four they wanted to I want you to do that in the right order and look how nice they machined it with a spiral its machined from a solid piece well here you see it's sent cost and then machined and one again they have some pretty strong Springs here you see that that's massive another force that's why they need such a massive back plate here well one eight thousand contacts need to be pushed down you need strong Springs by the way eight thousand that's about the number we can expect here so something did go clunk it was not maybe it was your secrets okay so I have to clean that first yep so here this the back side of the CPU chip and as I said before let's try to count these contacts that's 10 20 30 40 maybe 50 that would be two and a half thousand per square and that's 10,000 in total so I think it's about eight thousand yeah and if you look closely you can see they look like small well they look a little bit spongy just like little piles of wire that are crammed into a hole it's not a uniform so that's just some wire that acts like a spring and they squeeze together between the PCB and the actual chip I know that because there is a clip here plastic clip and there is another clip on this side and they retain this well that's the CPU socket what a CPU interface so now we want to see it we want to call it and it has this springy wire piles here squeezed between the CPU and the board and that makes the contacts very simple and hopefully very reliable and now that's the heat spreader as you know that from your desktop processor but multi chip module here and I read that in the in the red book so IBM has a red book for every machine with all technical details and stuff that is interesting this is a glass ceramic multi-layer substrate and it has 101 layers and inside this block here are 400 meters of wire to connect all the chip that or on the other side beneath that plate here so I think I will open that - well it took a while to or remove all the screws they all have a spring washer and a normal washer underneath and if you also cut the label here you can then easily separate the two parts here and as you can see the heats brighter here that's solid copper more than 10 millimeters too thick and from the weight I would say that frame is also copper and here we have something quite interesting it has metal sheet spacers here you can see those there is a one or two thicker spacers yes and then a vein on that is adjusted to the thickness of the chip because you don't want the chip to put under stress or under too much stress so they measure to measure the chip they select the shims here accordingly to the thickness and then they just put it together because the chip here so older or the multi chip module which has its own number here all the chips are on the other side and they are they touch directly to this copper heat spreader and I don't want to take that apart because I already have another one from another machine which is similar and that will look like that so you have a little island of copper for every single chip that is on that module here yeah it's about similar in size I think that one was a little bit bigger so we have 16 chips four or eight or sepia chips then we have cash chips input/output chips data encryption everything that's needed on a single multi chip module there is of course a lot of heat transfer compound here everything is filled up and that's the reason why this chip is sticking where we were all to that heat spreader and at the moment I don't want to separate them because well I try to keep the machine in a working state it then looks similar to that one so we already know this side we haven't seen yet that side so this one has three four five six and eight chips I think four of them maybe CPU four of them maybe cash it's from a lot of system oh it's only two CPU chips and a lot of other functions yeah that's also pretty nice okay I hope that was a little bit interesting thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: Play with Junk

Views: 101,783

Rating: 4.8714943 out of 5

Keywords: IBM, Z890, mainframe, computer, MCM, Multi Chip Module, teardown, power on

Id: AptJJsO5qCg

Length: 51min 37sec (3097 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 10 2019