Hobbyist looking for AIX 5.3 licensing advice...

Hello. I'm a hobbyist who likes to buy old(er) machines on eBay then play around with them (hardware and software). My current project is an IBM RS/6000 43p-150. It came with AIX 5.3 pre-installed, no media or licenses or documentation of any kind. One of the things I like to do is run various benchmark applications, both commercial and stuff I've writing (mainly in C). I installed gcc on the system but I can't do some of the stuff I want because libm.a is not part of gcc, it is part of the commercial OS/SDK from IBM. So I went looking through IBM websites and literature and it appears that I would need to get a license for 5.3, and perhaps I indirectly have one by the fact that I now own an IBM RS/6000 and AIX would have been included with it (but probably not the development kit). So I then attempted to ask IBM about how to get properly licensed so I can download what I need. I was then told AIX 5.3 is no longer supported so even if licensed the software would not be available. So I'm kind of stuck. Anybody have an IBM rep who is friendly, patient and able to help with older equipment/software? This obviously won't be a big "sale" so I think that's why I'm not having a lot of luck getting IBM to engage. Thanks in advance for any pointers!

If you can wait sometime beginning next year, I may have something...
I had to remove all my stuff from work, and filled 18 boxes... and now resting at the end of my garage, only I am lightly disabled an cannot lift or carry anything at the moment, I remembered having packed my CDs of Bull Aix 5.3 with extras as I was in charge of the Bull escalas series...
I did work on a 43P 19years ago, it was the console of our SP2 hehe

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Thanks, I'll check back with you next year if I don't have some luck in the meantime. Just for fun I did another full loop with IBM. Started with Sales who then push me off to Tech Support, who then push me back to Sales. Since the machine and OS version is out of support they understandably don't know how to proceed. Solution just seems to be to get somebody's media, but I'm sort of a stickler for playing by licensing rules so don't feel great about that.

I suggest you look also at AIX Open Source Packages | Main / AIX Open Source Packages what Michael has for AIX 5.3...

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in the olden days you could not buy an AIX license without buying the hardware and vice versa. Since you have bought an old AIX box, you automatically bought the connected AIX license - so here you are golden. Both your hardware and your software are out of support for a very very long time, but AIX 5.3 supports linux rpms and runs just fine with most open software products. So as suggested above, you can get pretty much anything you will ever need from either bull, herzl.org or even from the IBM Toolbox for Linux Applications.

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I know this thread is old.

I am also a hobbyist, who used to work on an RS6000 running AIX back in the early 90's.

I recently acquired an RS6000 P185-7047 machine that had AIX 5.3 loaded on it, but didn't come with any media.

I have the machine running great, but trying to load a tape backup software (Bareos), and I am missing a library file "libm" which appears to be only available on the installation media.

I am trying to find some way to obtain this media. It isn't on any of the sites. Am I out of luck. I did find a set of media for 5.2, but don't know if that is compatible.

Any help or suggestions would be appreciated.

Jim