From the Inside Flap
Introduction
0.1 THE AS/400 LEGACY
In the early part of 1988 the computer industry was buzzing with rumors of the "Silverlake" project. Although most of the technical details were kept under wraps, the industry knew "Silverlake" was the next generation of IBM midrange processors-the heir apparent to the throne room where the System/38 ruled from one chair and the System/36 from another. In many minds "Silverlake" was to usher in a new generation of midrange computing which would shore up the position of midrange processors in the face of the encroaching hordes of PCs, LANs, and the crumbling bastions of mainframes. The name "Silverlake" was borrowed from a body of water located near the IBM Rochester, Minnesota center responsible for the development of the system. Although several analysts predicated the final system would bear the "Silverlake" moniker, the final product was released to the world in June of 1988 as the AS/400, the "AS" standing for "Application System," and the "400" rumored to represent the number of users the high-end system would handle. The AS/400 was heralded into the data processing community with great vigor and much hoopla. In the months preceding the announcement IBM allowed software companies to load and test their software applications on the AS/400. The payoff for this effort was that the AS/400 was released with thousands of ready-to-run commercial application programs from both IB
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