• Hello MLAers! We've re-enabled auto-approval for accounts. If you are still waiting on account approval, please check this thread for more information.

AS/400 Connectivity

There were a couple cards manufactured, but I'm not sure how easy it will be to find them or the matching software.

One such card is the IDEAcomm Mac which fits into an SE. I have seen one in person so I can confirm they exist.
DCA May have also manufactured such cards, but finding info on these is difficult. People typically see a terminal card and accelerate it into the nearest trash bin, since "Why would anyone want that."
 
Surprised Apple didn't have a Twinax solution as that was the most common way to connect 5250 terminals at the time. Today all this stuff is obsolete with the advent of TN5250 gateways so not surprised this stuff got tossed. The client performance quoted is pretty terrible. These are block terminals from the 70s with optional color. It doesn't require that much horsepower to run one of these!
 
I wouldn't be surprised if those Apple cards were simply rebranded Andrew products, which were available for ISA bus and NuBus.

I can't remember the name of the associated software, but my last employer had a couple of the cards installed in a Quadra 950, and it served as a Token Ring > IP network bridge, allowing Mac clients to connect using Andrew terminal emulation software. I was very impressed by how an experienced data entry person could blaze through the billing software we were using, using a computer equipped with nothing more than a 12 or 14-inch CRT. This would have been unthinkable with the more graphical system which replaced it.

Other associated hardware that I can recall (besides the AS/400 itself) included some terminals, a dot-matrix printer, hubs, and (very useful) coax to twisted-wire adapters. Said wire looked like ordinary phone cable.
 
Crazy thing was, said ex-employer was relying on that AS/400, maybe beyond 2010? Only switched to something more modern when HIPAA demanded it. Wasn't so much worried about the AS/400, as IBM still had people on the ground to service it. But the Andrew hardware and software hadn't been supported in years, and unless you can get ahold of license keys, no obvious way to add more users, and no promise that any needed authentication server on the company's end would be operational.
 
Anyone know of an Twinax adapter that supported 5250 emulation for the 68k platform?
I only found this @ https://try-as400.pocnet.net/wiki/Apple_SNA•ps#cite_ref-5 which read that the Apple Coax adapter was planned to support Twinax but was dropped.

it wasn't dropped, it just wasn't used.. by apple. if you read the apple uhhh network solutions guide or whatever the doc was, it states that 3rd party vendors offer software packages to make use of the twinax port.

macmidrange will detect the coax/twinax card and probably can make use of it... I haven't tested functionality past detection though.

also that card is omega rare so I'd go for something else.
 
None of this is a surprise. Tons of "green screen" applications are in use today. I use a TN3270 session daily at work along with many other IBM CICS applications that were, ahem, "upgraded" to a web interface. A well designed 3270 or 5250 terminal application is WAY easier to work when than a stupid slow web interface.
 
None of this is a surprise. Tons of "green screen" applications are in use today. I use a TN3270 session daily at work along with many other IBM CICS applications that were, ahem, "upgraded" to a web interface. A well designed 3270 or 5250 terminal application is WAY easier to work when than a stupid slow web interface.
I swear that all these "upgrades" meant to replace all those "primitive" POS systems from the 80s and 90s with slick 'n click systems that do everything have only made things worse.

They are slow, cumbersome, and people can't figure out how to use them because the UI was designed by idiots who think having everything controlled by a single, 1920x1080 button with no visual cues and no explanation is fine and good.

To be sure, the old systems had a learning curve too, and they are genuinely slower and less secure, but once learned, they seemed quite fast and efficient for most ordinary things.

Crazy thing was, said ex-employer was relying on that AS/400, maybe beyond 2010? Only switched to something more modern when HIPAA demanded it.
That's absurd. The old AS/4000 setup, ironically, is probably far more secure than anything modern!

My dentist has to keep digital files stored in a very special, super secure server locked in a concrete vault and only accessible to a specially licensed person. As recently as 5 years ago, no problem! Keep the files where you like, so long as you follow security best practices. But nowadays you'd think a persons' tooth x-ray is equivalent to some top secret government document!

If I were ever in any kind of work where that level of security was mandated by law, regardless of whether or not it actually makes any sense, I'd rather not bother with computerization at all and just go back to paper.

c
 
it wasn't dropped, it just wasn't used.. by apple. if you read the apple uhhh network solutions guide or whatever the doc was, it states that 3rd party vendors offer software packages to make use of the twinax port.

macmidrange will detect the coax/twinax card and probably can make use of it... I haven't tested functionality past detection though.

also that card is omega rare so I'd go for something else.
You have a copy of the MacMidrange program? Any chance you could help me out with finding a copy? I have on its way a IDEAComm SE-5251 card and their 5250 software seems lost to time, so I wanted to see if that program might detect this card.
 
You have a copy of the MacMidrange program? Any chance you could help me out with finding a copy? I have on its way a IDEAComm SE-5251 card and their 5250 software seems lost to time, so I wanted to see if that program might detect this card.

I will be following your experience with interest on this. I have one of these cards as well and the only information I’ve ever been able to find is me asking about it every 20 years or so.

I never found the software, either. It was long gone even 20 years ago. It was not present on the SE my card came in.
 
I will be following your experience with interest on this. I have one of these cards as well and the only information I’ve ever been able to find is me asking about it every 20 years or so.

I never found the software, either. It was long gone even 20 years ago. It was not present on the SE my card came in.
I found a reddit post from two years ago where someone had one new in box (the SE version at that), but when bitsavers asked him about it last year for archiving purposes there was no reply. I wish whoever he sold that boxed card to had archived, but I haven't found anything else out there on this.
 
Back
Top