My 30 year love affair with IBM big iron which started when I was a Systems Programmer at IBM Hursley in the early 1970s is, by now, well chronicled and patently obvious.

If you really want further proof you can of course visit www.guruge.com and poke around.

As you can see from my work here I continue to be heavily involved in most things related to Big Iron servers, whether it be zAAP, POWER5, zLinux, WebSphere for z/OS, i5s, or just plain Web-to-host.

Though I try to keep you folks appraised of the key happenings in the mainframe world through my submissions here at "IT In-Depth" it is never as timely or as comprehensive as some of you would like!  Sorry.  Some of you got used to my monthly Newsletter which I stopped doing in March 2004.  [There are some back issues here as well as at guruge.com.]

So here is the deal.

If I have any breaking news or BIG IRON-specific documents that could be of interest to YOU I will send it to you, on an ad hoc basis as and when it is appropriate.

I have no desire to do regular or formalized "news flashes".  There is enough of those around.

Here is the deal.  Your e-mail addresses will not be sold or shared.  I know how annoying that can be.

You will only ever receive e-mails from ME -- with my name on it from either anu@guruge.com or anu@wownh.com.

Promise.  You trust will not be abused.

This service, at least for the time being, is complimentary.

There are no catches or strings to this.  I think my credentials are fairly well known by now.

Thank YOU for your time.  Go in peace.  May mainframes continue to rock.

Mainframe pictures from IBM's archives.

The first picture (the b&w one) is of a S/370-168.  We had a few of those in Hursley in 1975.  The console that you see in the middle included a microfiche reader!  I used to have to go in on Sunday's to test new software releases.  Sometimes I would have to IPL one of these 168s.  The hum as all the drives kicked in was quite a trip.  The 2nd picture is of a 3031.  Worked with many of those when I was at ITT in the early 1980s.  Today when all of IBM's servers have what I call the Darth Vader look, it is nice to reminiscence that there was a special color code for mainframes called "Fyffes Yellow" -- because Fyffes, a big mainframe customer, always wanted their mainframes in their trademark yellow banana color!