Free Host-Based TN3270 Solution?

photozz asks: "Our company has got itself into a bind. We need to standardize on a TN3270 emulator for the Wintel boxes in our environment (primarily Win2K) The Linux/Unix guys are OK already )of course), unfortunately, the budget has run out. Our preferred solution would be something host based, but a client side solution would work. Sun has some Java stuff, but I figured if anyone would have a range of solutions, it would be this community. Anyone have ideas? If it matters, we are looking at 1000-2000 clients."

Comments

free stuff

[Pauly]

Why not set up a shell server that your users log into and then from there use any of the ample, able 3270 emulators to then connect to the ultimate destination(s)? All you should need for 2000 clients is any reasonably modern FreeBSD/Linux box with a fat LAN connection.

Re:free stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

It is possible to run a text-based tn3270
client over a telnet session. It's odd,
it's slightly kludgy.
My university does this,
because not everyone's got tn3270 clients,
and the student records software is tn3270.

Re:free stuff

[ddstreet]

The client he's talking about is probably x3270

x3270 is the X version; the 3270 package comes with c3270 also which is the curses version. That's the one to use. It works fine with a default cygwin install. I've already tried it. However not everyone may want to install cygwin, but c3270 runs fine over a telnet/ssh into a UNIX box (from Windoze or any other system), so it's easy to simply set up a single (or several) UNIX boxes for the 10,000 people to telnet/ssh into and run c3270.

The only caveat is the 3270 protocol sucks, and there are many "control" characters like Ctrl-C, Ctrl-X, etc that does "clear", and "reset", etc. It's in the 3270 man pages.

Re:TuCows

[tpv]

Well none of the products you liked to are free...