Baby/38

An emulation of an RPG III environment running on an IBM System/38 originally published by California Software Products in 1989. Based on their earlier Baby/36 RPG II package but the company had attempted to create an S/38 RPG emulation to no avail since it deemed that no available relational databases would either handle the task, or do so cost effectively. Unlike other System/3x products the S/38 contains not only an updated version of the RPG environment but also a fully fledged DB2 relational database. The release of Operating System/2 Extended Edition Version 1.3 that came integrated with Database Manager as well however fixed that problem.

Baby/38 allowed companies to move their RPG III code to a more cost-effective (and in some cases faster) OS/2 based PC server, which could be used to either as a networking host or if serial cards were fitted to the server, users could connect to it using terminals or terminal emulators, but the system could also to a degree work in tandem with and S/38 unit. But like the Baby/36 and the later Baby/400 Baby/38 was used as much or possibly even more as a platform for smaller firms and individuals to develop software for the S/38 without having to invest in an expensive multi-user computer.

The popularity of the system was hindered a bit by the requirement of a license fee based on each program you delivered in a PC format, the requirement for an OS/2 EE and relatively little interest in the S/38 especially after the AS/400 came out meant that this product had a much shorter lifetime than the other IBM system emulators from CSP.

Version

• Baby/38 version 1 (1989)

Prerequisites

• Operating System/2 Extended Edition Version 1.3