Chapter 10: Terminals and Printers

This chapter describes how to set up and configure Telnet 3270 (TN3270) terminal emulators and 3270 printer streams for reUZE Server.

Overview

The user interface to CICS applications running in reUZE Server is through 3270 terminal emulators. These enable reUZE Server to display CICS application input and output screens using 3270 data streams, and to receive input.

Note: Micro Focus does not provide a TN3270 emulator, so you need to use a third-party emulator.

Telnet 3270 Terminal Emulators

You can use third-party TN3270 terminal emulators as CICS clients. The TN3270 emulator session can run on the same machine as reUZE Server or on a network machine.

To use a TN3270 terminal emulator, you need to create a TN3270 listener in Enterprise Server Administration.

How to

When you specify the Endpoint for the listener, we recommend that you use any port number above 5000 that isn't in use, since the usual port number for Telnet, 23, might already be in use for non-3270 Telnet access.

By default MSS installs TN3270 terminals dynamically as basic 3270 terminals. This means that some of the more advanced features of your TN3270 terminal emulator won't be available. To make these features available, you need to enable MSS to associate the TN3270 device type and a CICS typeterm definition, known as a T-Type in ESMAC.

The TN3270 device type is specified by the emulator software and might or might not be configurable. Device types indicate the ability of the emulator to support various elements of the 3270 data stream, for example, color, extended attributes, the use of a TCTUA etc.

During the connection negotiation the TN3270 client sends a data packet indicating which device it wishes to emulate. MSS uses this data to identify a T-Type entry which defines this terminal type.

To make this work you need to:

Define a T-Type entry that matches the capabilities of the TN3270 terminal emulator.

Define a terminal model entry on the ESMAC Term page which points to this typeterm definition. Required fields for the terminal model entry are:

Name	Unique name of this terminal model
Model	O(nly) or Y(es)
Model name	The TN3270 device type
Terminal type	The name of the T-type entry to use with this terminal

For example, suppose the TN3270 client software is configured to emulate an IBM 3279 MOD2 with support for extended attributes. At connection time MSS searches for a terminal model entry with the name TN32792E. The terminal type specified in this terminal entry is then used to look up the terminal's details in the T-type entry .

If you want to use a screen size other than the default, which is MOD2 (24 by 80), you also need to:

Specify the screen size in the Alt. Screen Width and Alt. Screen Height fields of the ESMAC T-Type page.
Set the environment variable TX_TN3270_FORCE_ALT=Yes before starting the enterprise server.

Printers

You can use a printer device for 3270 printer support. Printer support is handled by 3270 printer emulators, which interpret the 3270 printer data stream and send it to a system printer.

To start a printer emulator in a MSS-enabled enterprise server, you must enable printer support. To do this update the following fields on the SIT page in ESMAC:

Field	Contents
3270 Print	Y
Print Destination	Device name for printed output, for example LPT1

The enterprise server starts a printer emulator for each entry in the terminal table which is:

Set as MODEL=NO (the netname must be defined)
Has a Terminal Type entry which specifies a 3270 printer (3270P)

The netname defined in the terminal table must be unique to the region. The terminal ID for the printer is taken from the terminal definition.

To avoid conflicts with automatically assigned netnames, you should assign netnames to printers counting downwards: PRNZ999, PRNY999 ... PRNA000.