TN3270 Terminal Emulator Software

Vivek Anand · New User Joined: 04 Jun 2013 Posts: 19 Location: India

Hi,
My shop is planning to buy new licenses for TN3270 Terminal Emulator software to connect to Mainframe. As there are quite a number of T.E software available on the internet, we are not able to decide which one to go for. Could any one please suggest a good T.E. software. Also, the preference is for IBM products, so your inputs on IBM T.E software would also be valuable.

enrico-sorichetti · Posted: Tue Jun 11, 2013 11:42 am

prino · Posted: Tue Jun 11, 2013 2:49 pm

Why the requirement for IBM produced software, when there are many other choices?

There is the free multi-platform open-source x3270 and if you want to go for something that is probably better supported, is tiny (1.8Mb download) by today's standards and runs well, even on older hardware, you could go for Tom Brennan's Vista tn3270. It costs just USD 30 and I've been using it for about 4 years, it's well written, does what it says on the box, and if you do find a bug, Tom usually resolves it in just a few hours.

Vivek Anand · New User Joined: 04 Jun 2013 Posts: 19 Location: India

Hi Prino,
Thanks a lot for your inputs on this. The reason for preferring IBM product is because my shop has a strategic partnership with IBM and hence we might get the product at a discounted price.

The other aspect that i have missed to mention in my original post is that we are also looking at an emulator that would integrate well with HP Quick Test Professional (QTP). I doubt that x3270 would cater for this. I understand, for this, the emulator must be based on HLLAPI. IBM's PCOMM seems to be based on HLLAPI. Any idea if Tom Brennan's software is based on HLLAPI?

dick scherrer · Posted: Tue Jun 11, 2013 7:11 pm

Hello and welcome to the forum,

Suggest you go to Tom Brennan's site (link provided by Prino) and look around. If you do not find what you are looking for send him an e-mail - his e-address is on the About Me page . . .

Ed Goodman · Active Member Joined: 08 Jun 2011 Posts: 556 Location: USA

If you have QTP set up already, look at the list of IBM emulators it supports.

We had some issues with HOD using HLLAPI. There was an add-on needed to enable it.

Also, if you use non-IBM emulators now, be prepared for some of your screens to change colors. IBM fully implements the proper protocols (they wrote 'em) but a lot of other products don't. If your programmers have been using another product, they may have written things that will work differently in HOD. (Maybe PCOMM too)

Vivek Anand · New User Joined: 04 Jun 2013 Posts: 19 Location: India

Thanks very much Ed for the useful piece of information.

Jose Mateo · Posted: Thu Jun 13, 2013 9:28 pm

Good day!

Checkout the one from Rocket software.

Vivek Anand · New User Joined: 04 Jun 2013 Posts: 19 Location: India

Thanks Jose, will do.