CKJ25@plearn.bitnet (Jan P. Radomski) (02/19/91)
[Moderator's Note: Richard Budd passed this along to the Digest, and
adds this introductory paragraph prior to the letter from Poland. PAT]
First, let me thank the TELECOM Digest readers for their answers to my
question on BITNET in Poland. I am waiting for a reply from Wroclaw
before sending PAT a summary of my findings. Meanwhile,this request
was passed to me on PLEARN from Jan Radomski at the University of
Warsaw. Though many of his questions deal with IBM mainframes, there
are some telecom issues here as well. My apologies for the grammar.
---------------
CKJ25@PLEARN.BITNET (Jan Radomski) writes in PLEARN-L 2/18/91:
This time I have a very specific plea to our IBM gurus.
After rather long and tiresome struggle the Chemistry Department has
obtained much awaited cluster of some IBM 3274 terminals, the remote
controller unit for them and a diskette with the bootstrap code. All
of above were purchased second hand from some Scandinavian company,
which is the main reason of part of our troubles with them. All
terminals have their keyboard layout and appropriate screen characters
generator customized meet the needs of some Scandinavian, rather than
English (not to say Polish) language. Any hints how to start their
recustomization will be welcome.
The second thing is more urgent. As I said before, hardware is
accompanied by the diskette. In the controller unit there are two disk
drives. Before logging in one is expected to feed the diskette in one
of those drives; otherwise nothing works. The diskette format is
proprietary, and the usual pain in the neck. But, since this diskette
is ABSOLUTELY VITAL we would like to duplicate it. And, as we've got
only one such per cluster, I don't think that such a feat would
constitute an act of software piracy. The problem, however, is that
nobody here knows how to do it.
Our (temporary we do hope, but these temporary things have an
astonishing tendency to stay permanent) solution to the EARN
connection, has one, but rather big blemish. The lack of any way to
carry on FILE transfers. Or so it seems to us, but maybe these disk
drives in the controller unit could be used for that? We were told
about some gizzmo cards which one could put into the PC and, after
connecting it with the coaxial cable to the mentioned controller, get
3270 emulation. But that was only as reliable as hearsay info. If this
was true, than how do we get such a card? And what about software
needed?
The next matter concerns the use of dot matrix printers which
accompanied our cluster. For that we simply lack customization
software necessary. Is there any public domain or shareware code
available?
The last problem deals with our telephone. Our cluster is linked to
the Plearn node BASF computer by the direct telephone line, which (as
the one of the remainders of the past regime) connects the Rector's
and Dean's offices between 8:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. After that there
is COMPUTER TIME -:). We would like very much to chenge this to the
round the clock mode of operation, but .. -:(. So, it seems that the
only solution is to put Data Over Voice modems on that line. So far
however, we do know only about rather expensive DOV modems. On the
other hand, if we are forced to find a permanent solution on such a
line we would like to to get multiplexing capabilities as well. As for
now we lack any machine to play a role of end-node server, but we
expect and hope for this situation to end in a SUNny future (sooner,
the better). Then, our link needs to be prepared to carry on it
three-services burden.
I only now have realized that this note is getting out of hand by
being much too long. Sorry for that. The technical problems of certain
nature (maybe a small fry for you) tends to overwhelm my chemistry. -:)
Best regards, Jas.
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Richard Budd | E-Mail: IBMers - rcbudd@rhqvm19.ibm
VM Systems Programmer | All Others- klub@maristb.bitnet
IBM - Sterling Forest, NY | Phone: (914) 578-3746