I strongly recommend Cameo machines from Silhouette. I don't know if their software runs in Wine on Linux, but they aren't actively hostile to 3rd party software. I usually use the Inkscape-Silhouette extension, but there are others that appear more polished, so I don't know why I don't explore more, but the point is that there are more options on both Linux and other platforms.
I've used mine for vinyl lettering and decals, making stencils from old transparency sheets, and paper craft stuff. Cameo's can also double as pen plotters, for people who want to try getting into that cheaply. For pen plotter use, I don't think there is much difference between the oldest and newest Cameo, except the option to hold 2 pens at once, so get a cheap used one for $50. For actually cutting things, the autoset blade is a nice option that means a used one might be closer to $100.
It looks like the desktop/workstation price is $25/yr, which seems pretty reasonable. For personal users, it is free for 5 concurrent machines. Unfortunately the per server price is $500/yr, which maybe competitive with some of the competition, but still seems steep to me. But then, while I run Ubuntu VMs or containers, I'm not really using it for bare metal servers any more.
For some comparisons, Proxmox is €370/yr/socket. RHEL Workstation is $196.90/yr, while server is $383.90/yr, and Oracle Linux is reportedly $1,199/socketpair/yr.
Given the free distro, subscription support model that tends to prevail, a pay once price with either no free, or on top of the free option might be a hard sell.
To jump on the bandwagon, I do that sort of work sometimes, but more details on the product to modify would be needed. Also, it may be more cost effective to design a replacement product (also noted by others), which I can also do. I would have reached out directly, but you didn't provide any contact information in your profile. You can find contact information for me in my profile. I wish you luck either way.
It starts with the assumption that the VM/370 machine will be virtual.
Ignoring the XT/370 and P/370, where there any other System/370 systems that could run on a 15 amp 220v/240v outlet? If not, it would be difficult to put into the living room, in most parts of the world.
"Most parts of the world" use 230V with sockets capable of delivering 16A. In the UK where the standard mains connector is rated at 13A, you'd probably need to do a bit of measuring but you'd be okay. If you really needed it, you'd just have a Ceeform connector run in and a 16A breaker - quite common in garages, especially if you've got workshop equipment to run.
About the only countries that don't use 230V are the US, Canada, and Japan, which even combined only have about one third of the population of India.
Add in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Australia, and New Zealand, and you'd probably find that most parts of the world can cope 240V 15A no problem at all ;-)
Which is like 100 amps at 230V so you would need several sockets to get that much power. Just getting the machine into the room looos like a challenge.
What's funny is that I never actually felt it was hot in a datacenter that hosted a mainframe, I think because they were water cooled and also not packed in that tight.
Circa 2005 I would regularly go to the data center on the 7th floor of Rhodes hall [1] and it had a mainframe (cool, but it might have been CMOS instead of bipolar) and huge amounts of rack space devoted to RS-6000, SGI, SPARC and other legacy RISC servers and just a few racks of x86 servers which felt a lot hotter both from radiant heat in the front and hot air blowing out the back because they were packed in tight -- three racks of modern servers would outpower that old CMOS mainframe although of course they do a lot more.
[1] I work on the 6th now but never go to the data center
I once worked for an ISP where our routers and servers were co-located at the San Diego Supercomputer Center.
So I would visit the machine room on occasion to go fix things with the SunOS 4 systems we had.
For a while, I considered requesting that my assigned desk be moved into the machine room, because our servers occupied two ordinary tables in a far corner of the place that was about as far from humanity as anyone could go. It was, of course, noisy with white noise and chilly with air conditioning to keep the machines more comfortable than the staff.
I never made my request and it never would've been granted. I imagine they couldn't even run a phone line into that place to get a hold of me.
I do have an archive of Linux ISOs, but it is not anywhere near petabyte sized. Well I'm not trying to be comprehensive, everyone I download for many years now gets archived, and I am not sure that it is reached a terabyte yet.
If the cards were legally acquired in the first place, I don't see how they (the shop) have any moral reason not to upgrade the cards however their customers want. It isn't their laws that prevent high memory cards. And the appeal of this is not just limited to sanctions limited countries. The prices for these modified cards are wildly cheaper than any vaguely equivalent card that and video will allow to be sold from an authorized OEM.
Five for one would love to be able to do that sort of upgrade work and offer it in the Continental US.
It is true that they did not entirely specified what happened to the waste boards here. Clearly somebody who is stripping parts is then reassembling cards and selling them on eBay or other places. I hope it is not this shop, but clearly they didn't even try to disclaim that behavior. I'm not saying they didn't disclaim it because they're guilty, it could just have not come up.
Generally there are a number of valuable components on the waste boards which can be parted out, and often kept on-hand for other repairs. Each of the chips on those boards are valuable for future repairs, and (in the USA at least) often quite difficult for repair shops to obtain. Here[0] is an example of such a chip from a MacBook Pro - it's a proprietary, custom Apple component so generally you can only obtain them through salvage.
I don't know if this shop sells any of their scrap into the scam industry, but I bet they'd have a white-hat market available for a lot of it.
You just know the next version will probably get voice recognition and some connection to an LLM to generate line drawings for it too then place on paper.
I think it would be cool to have a variant built that included some sort of turtle graphic system. Or maybe a voice controlled logo language?
In quite a few areas you mention (control of congresses, senates, president) the system has been optimized to allow less densely populated areas to have outsized control. Less densely populated areas historically were the ones that wanted slavery and currently are the areas dominated by Republicans for a number of reasons. The majority it the supreme Court reflects who was in power when people died it retired, not an actual reflection of the people. If a state has a Democrat governor it probably means most of the state is left wing. If that same state has a Republican Senate and a Democrat governor (like mine does) it means that more people are left, but the right has disproportionate control do to low population areas getting disproportionate control
I think for law enforcement and corporations, there is more money and power to be found in supporting the right, so it requires strong leadership to try to do what is best for the population instead of themselves. On the corporate side, this isn't helped by the view pushed into the legal system that corporations only social responsibility is to make the most money for their shareholders in the short term.
We seem to have a system of democracy that may be inferior to many other countries and the cracks are showing. On the not so positive other hand, countries that I would have said have a more robust system are also starting to show cracks, and I don't think it is only because of the influence of foreign big money.
I've used mine for vinyl lettering and decals, making stencils from old transparency sheets, and paper craft stuff. Cameo's can also double as pen plotters, for people who want to try getting into that cheaply. For pen plotter use, I don't think there is much difference between the oldest and newest Cameo, except the option to hold 2 pens at once, so get a cheap used one for $50. For actually cutting things, the autoset blade is a nice option that means a used one might be closer to $100.
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