IBM SE's are like the Maytag repair man...

I received a call from one of my clients in South Florida reporting that the iSeries has a yellow light on the panel and could I look into it. 


A simple to do, I accessed a PC on their LAN via Logmein and started a 5250 session. Entered WRKPRB on command line and discovered indeed there is an error. SRC 2746B940 is displayed and upon further analysis I discover that the Twinax controller card is reporting failure. Evidently the issue first happened two months ago and was not noticed. This is one of those operation that the AS/400 iSeries is tucked under a table and only visited to take tape out and put in the next tape for daily save's. The Twinax connected console is not ever powered up and rarely used. 


I am not sure why this had not been a bigger problem since two printers are connected to the system via Twinax to IO box.
The machine is under hardware and software maintenance so a quick call to IBM to generate a PMR. Five minutes later I'm talking with a technician who verifies that the controller card is failing and he would dispatch a replacement card and systems engineer to install.


Next day, SE show's up after card delivered via Fed-Ex. After an hour the IBM SE is on the way out the door and the system is back to normal. 


I rarely get to see the SE's since I now work mostly remote and the iSeries rarely needs repair. I do have to look into why the system did not notify IBM on it's own. I am suspicious of some DSL / Firewall changes that may have broke the connection and plan on looking into the issue shortly.


~Richard