farber%udel-eecis1.udeecis@udel-ee.arpa (11/02/83)
From: Dave Farber <farber%udel-eecis1.udeecis@udel-ee.arpa> (#399, 61 lines) Posted: Sun Oct 23 09:56:04 1983 Received: From Udel-Eecis3.arpa by udel-ee via smtp; 23 Oct 83 9:55 EDT Date: Sun, 23 Oct 83 9:44:27 EDT From: Manny Farber <manny@udel-eecis3.udeecis> To: news@udel-eecis3.udeecis Subject: new ibm pc products At the IEEE personal computer conference, I saw an IBM 3270-PC. The IBM 3270 was good. Originally, the IBM person there booted the system without a diskette in the drive, so it started up in cassette BASIC. The screen quality was at least as good as that of the monochrome display, but in color. From BASIC, however, it doesn't do graphics. It acts like a monochrome, except, that instead of underlining, etc. it has the colors used on the color card. The keyboard was a superset of the IBM PC keyboard. Even so, the layout was a world better. There were nice big return and shift keys, and the keys were easier to press. There are legends all over the place on the keys; blue legends are for IBM PC specific usages. There are twenty extra function keys in two rows across the top. IBM sells this keyboard seperately for $295. However, I looked in the back, and the keyboard was plugged into a card in a feature slot; a cable came from the card and plugged into the normal place for the keyboard. The 3270 can have 7 windows; 4 for terminals, 2 for local scratchpads, and 1 for an IBM PC. The one for the IBM PC only works with programs that only use the ROM-BIOS and PC-DOS for screen addressing. This is necessary, but severely limits the usage. According to IBM literature, the 3270 has "advanced screen management" which allows the user to move windows, change the sizes of windows, select background colors, define combinations of windows in up to ten logical screens, define user-controlled display area to view a presentation space (which logically represents a host [upto 3440 characters] or a local session [2000 characters]). Copy between presentation spaces, transfer binary, EBCDIC, ASCII files, etc. If anyone has any questions, I have the product announcement; address mail to MFARBER@UDEL-RELAY. IBM has several models from $4290 through $7180. The IBM person said that a PC can NOT be ubgraded to a 3270. They didn't have it there an XT/370 there, but they had the product announcement for it. (Delivery is 1Q '84). I will quote from the beginning of the product announcement: "IBM announces the IBM Personal Computer XT/370, an extended version of the IBM XT. The IBM PC is a System/370 workstation which can interact with a System/370 host. When the new IBM Virtual Machine/Personal Computer licensed program is installed, many unaltered CMS Sys/370 programs can run on the workstation. System/370 functions have been achieved while mainting IBM PC compatibility." An XT can be upgraded to an XT/370. IBM has a special Expansion Unit for the XT/370. I have the product announcement for that, too if anyone has any questions. -Manny