Names

The AS/400 / iSeries / i5 has had a number of names over the years.

It started life as the Application System/400 ... or AS/400.

It combined the best of S/38 and S/36, leaning on S/38 for OS foundation and S/36 for user-friendliness. S/36 and S/38 in turn, have a rich heritage in the S/34 which in its hey day had a revolutionary 48 bit OS at a time when 8 bit was standard for PCs.

Many IBM customers on S/36 SSP were slow to embrace the AS/400 so IBM introduced the Advanced System 36 ... or AS/36 which had several models such as AS/236 and AS/436 with upgrade paths to AS/400 models.

Before the world moved to using PCs as the main interface to talk to the 400, we had IBM Keyboards with keys that are now largely disappeared from the keyboards of today.

Around the year 2000, IBM changed it's name to eServer iSeries (The "i" indicating "Integrated"?)

Then, in 2004, the name was changed to i5. The "5" referring to the Power5 Processor that was at the heart of the system. At the same time OS/400 was renamed to i5/OS.

Confused? I sure am.