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

hear! hear!

[spike666]

i agree.

but here's some hints. go look up the code for x3270 (the x-windows 3270 stuff) and then the tn3270 code for unix. try and hack that together in wintel land. (maybe compiling it under cygwin will work...)

or do some searches on java 3270 applciations. but dont expect the users to like any of these. you cant cut & paste nicely etc.

or...
theres qws3270 at http://www.jollygiant.com
i know of a few companies that use that and got really nice enterprise license costs...

or...
http://freehost3270.sourceforge.net/

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

[Permission Denied]

I don't see how this would work (?). tn3270 is a completely different environment (although still text-based for the most part). The client he's talking about is probably x3270, which is an X11 program; "regular" terminal emulators (like windows telnet, putty ssh, mindterm, etc), cannot do what tn3270 needs.

You could combine these ideas: get a bunch of old boxen, put Linux on them, get them a FAST network connection (network will probably be the bottleneck here), create accounts for your 1000 users (or be creative and use pam_ldap, pam_samba, whatever is appropriate for your environment) and have them run an X server on their PCs. You might try cygwin's compile of XFree86. It's actually decent, although it's not rootless. I don't know what the prices are for eXceed or other commercial X servers, but XFree86 under cygwin is OK and the price is right.

If you go with cygwin, you can cut the Linux boxen out of picture (definitely a good idea). I don't believe x3270 comes with cygwin, but it should compile OK (I haven't had any problems compiling fairly complex X stuff under cygwin). Installing cygwin company-wide shouldn't be too much of an issue as the install just copies some files and runs one shell script to create /etc/passwd after installation.

But yeah, if you're looking for a free native NT client, I haven't found one. All the places I've worked at that have these mainframes (a total of two) actually paid for their clients. I don't know if there will ever be one, since the communities of old mainframes and windows shareware are worlds apart.

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.

More information...

[singularity]

I had to access a TN3270 server a while back. Luckily there is a great freeware client for the Mac.

Someone else mentioned the clients on Tucows. I checked each of them, and they are all shareware. They might be willing to allow a site licence if you drew a nice check, but it sounds like a free client would be better.

I could not dig up a freeware client for Windows that will run across the board (3.x up to XP and ME). In fact, I had trouble digging up a free client at all.

About the only thing I found was on a search of SourceForge. Freehost3270 is apparently in alpha testing right now, but it is probably worth a look. You might even be able to help out. It also has the benifit of being on the server side and not the client side.

Re:TuCows

[tpv]

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

Re:5250 client

[Chanc_Gorkon]

Maybe he's trying to go to a zSeries machine in which case it MUST be 3270. 5250 is for the AS/400, 3270 is for the mainframe. You can't just change between the two and expect it to work!