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IBM Wants to Port Office to Linux
shfted! writes "OSNews reports: As part of its initiative to put Linux on the desktop, IBM Corp. wants to migrate Microsoft Corp.'s Office suite to Linux. Microsoft said it's not involved and suggests that IBM might do it by emulation."
Why use Microsoft Office when Open Office is getting so good?
eclecti.cc
Big Bleu cheese and WINE?
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
Last one using windows is a rotten egg!
Does this mean we'll finally get clippy?
WOOHOO!
Microsoft needs a way to sell massive mainframes running Linux, so they're porting over the biggest, most resource using, application ever: Microsoft Office.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Yet more evidence of the fact that Microsoft's days are numbered. The reasons for various organizations staying with them are steadily being taken away, one by one. I'd like to see one of those counters like they have for various social events counting off the number of organizations that have decided to go with open source as an alternative to MS.
Alas, this is only a good thing. Microsoft isn't wholly evil, they have just become something along those lines due to their position in the marketplace. Some competition capable of putting the fear of God into them will do nothing but improve things for everyone.
dmiessler.com -- grep understanding knowledge
we already have that. WINE!!!
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
I'm seriously questioning the validity of this article. It says an IBM spokesman said they got access to parts of Microsoft code. Something I believe is very unlikely given the IBM's purpose. And on the contrary Microsoft denies any involvement.
Not that I don't hope it would be true...
they certainly wouldn't need to do it by emulation should there be another source leak....*cough*
xao
http://TheHillforum.hopto.org
Will Microsoft try to sabotage this by "upgrading" Office in future versions to things that are difficult to "emulate" or include a clause in the EULA that says "You may not run this with a compatibility wrapper" or Linux or anything else? I could see this happening.
IBM tried to emulate Win16 application compatibility with its OS/2. As a result, nobody cared developing application of OS/2 as such. IMHO, emulation is a dead-end branch of development in this case.
For some reason (probably licensing issues with Sun) or compatibility with the rest of MS office document base, IBM does not want to develop OpenOffice or Corel WordPerfect Suit. I am just wondering - have they given up on their Lotus completely then?
I hope they DON'T go the "emulation" route - i.e. WINE
While WINE is a nice attempt to make a Win32 compatability layer, it is just too flakey to be used in a day-to-day business sense. IBM has used WINE before for providing Linux apps - HomePage Builder comes to mind immediately - and it was NEVER stable. Display problems, startup flakeness, and just general unstableness made the product truely painful to use.
If they want to do it right - and impress people at the same time, they should make a NATIVE APP
Ron Gage - Westland, MI
If Microsoft is not involved and is not providing any source code or detailed internal specs, the only reason IBM could provide a superior office suite to that offered by OpenOffice.org is a simple resourcing issue. IBM has a great deal of money and programming expertise to throw at such an effort. With this in mind, why wouldn't IBM simply become a greater contributor to the OpenOffice.org effort?
What could IBM achieve on it's own that they could not achieve in colaboration with OpenOffice.org? This whole effort seems rather strange and somewhat poorly thought out.
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
It looks like you are trying to build your kernel, would you like me to help?
If they can port Office without help from Microsoft, maybe they could also implement compatibility with open standards.
Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
How about Crossover Office by CodeWeavers. You can run the full Office suite including Outlook and Access. It works VERY VERY well. Better than running on Windows actually.
"It suits us fine the Microsoft and Sun fight about office application suites. We stay away from that. The reason we don't collaborate with Sun is that they're too small," said Pettersson.
The only problem is that 90% of the office users Think that they need MS Office to be productive. About 2% of those users actually use any of the 'features' or even much more than Word. Most people don't know how to set up a macro or even what a macro is or does. THe only thing that is keeping 100% interoperability from happening is the fact that Visual Basic is proprietary and can not be ported to linux at all. now if someone could develope a wrapper that would have the speed and functionality to be able to use Windows macros then Open Office would stand a chance.
Without that, the whole Office software couldn't be properly integrated.
To make Linux inferior and totally broken we need it! Port it to Linux! Finish your work, IBM, buy SCO and be friends again with Microsoft!
Yeah, this is great news and it only proves that IBM's in it for real. IBM is also creating a _desktop_ version of Linux - Blue Linux. It's not out yet, but PC Magazine's John Dvorak has already seen it.
HERE's the PC magazine article about it.
Oh, how many posts are now being composed in how many minds that state that IBM has now betrayed the FOSS Movement by not acknowledging the greatness of OpenOffice? How dare they!?
Come on, people, calm down. If IBM is doing this, they're acknowledging what everyone without ideological blinders admits: until OpenOffice can write a file that's 100% compatible with its Office equivalent, it won't make any headway. MS is too entrenched at this point. I can hear those same people as above screaming about Linux, but it's also a different battleground being fought in the office suite theater than in the desktop OS one. It's a hearts, minds, and heads battle rather than an economic one (which is the only argument that has been proven effective on non-tech types when it comes to converting systems to Linux). We've all heard the stories about the intransigent secretaries. That's where the fight will take place, and it's going to be a much harder battle that needs a much more polished product.
I'm hoping that IBM realizes that it owns Lotus and uses that particular brand for this effort. It still has some cachet in corporate circles.
If using Linux is about choice, how come people complain when I choose to use Windows?
I positively agree. If IBM wants to put effort in Office products, they should contribute to Open Office, instead helping MS porting their product.
It is ways more clever to help making an MS compatible free office suit alternative but to subsidize a monopoly.
Now since openoffice is already pretty far developed, a vote for supporting this product at least, koffice could need some more support either. MS does not need any support at all.
If IBM want to put effort in windows emulation, they should support wine. I'd definitely love to run tomb raider on my linux box.
Crossover Office has been great for me on my laptop. I work at a plant with 1000 Microsoft users and they can't write a five-word meeting notice without putting it in a Word document. For the sub-$60 license fee, it has been worth every penny. I keep Star Office going on my Sun and Ooffice on my desktop linux system, but more often than not, they can't properly open MS documents. Yes, it would be great if I could convince a billion dollar company to convert all its employees to Ooffice, and convince all our vendors and customers to convert, and convince all the technical organizations to use Ooffice presentation software at the conferences. But instead, I just paid the $60 and got back to work.
Can someone who has the sourcecode to MS Office please post it on the internet? Thanks.
IBM already offers Lotus Notes to its employees using Linux via WINE -- available for download by employees as part of its C4EB (Client for e-Business). They call it NUL (Notes Under Linux).
I have no special knowledge to substantiate this, but I expect they would take the same approach to accomplish this; it would certainly fit the pattern. In the end, we could see a substantially improved WINE as a result.
In the original swedish article it's written that Microsoft believes that IBM probably is working on a Terminal Emulation solution, not a emulation solution.
I have to say that MS getting work done for them is a little unsettling. However, the problem is not A Decent Office Suite For Linux. We have at least a usable one, OpenOffice, though it isn't utopian.
The problem is A Decent Office Suite For Linux That Can Interoperate Flawlessly With Microsoft Office. There's a lot of content out there in Office format, and having darn near perfect support for the format is important for any adopters.
May we never see th
These IBM and Microsoft Reps must come pre-made or something... Petterson... Perrson... come on, too many similarities there. They must buy from the same company.
i would view it as contaminating the linux operating system with MS's foreign programming techniques and bugs
And this, my friends, is the attitude that keeps Linux off the desktop.
There's a word for it: elitism.
You must REALLY hate WINE.
Having said that, it would be nice if a huge company like IBM would get behind a project like OO or KOffice, but the economics of the situation make that look like a very remote possibility. Unforrunately, we have to live in corporate reality when dealing with corporations, no matter how angelic they may seem (this year, anyway).
I can't believe no one has pointed this out yet:
From the article:
"Microsoft said it's not involved and suggests that IBM might do it by emulation."
IBM:"..But we're working together with Microsoft, who have provided us with part of their code. We've worked together like that previously."
So Microsoft isn't working with IBM but IBM is working with Microsoft because MS has provided them with part of their code. Hmm does MS have split personalities or something?
Have a look at Codeweavers Crossover Office.
It's a commercial Wine derivative that allows running a lot of Windows apps, including the full Microsoft Office suite.
And Office works extremely well. In fact... even better than Openoffice. Startup time is shorter than Openoffice. Rendering is good and fast. Compatibility is of course perfect.
{{.sig}}
Note that the article is saying that IBM wants to migrate Office to Linux. Not "give away for free". We'd still be paying monopolistic prices for it.
Velox Versutus Vigilans
Stefan Pettersson, technical manager for IBM's Lotus division in Sweden, said that there will be a Java client of Lotus Notes some time during the second half of 2004. This means that the first "native" Notes client to run under Linux will soon be available.
How exactly is that "native? I'm sorry, but a java version is only native to that weird Sun java cpu that never made it out of production... it's nothing more than emulation for a machine that doesn't actually exist.
The more software that can run on Linux, no matter the pedigree, implementation or emulation, the better.
What keeps you from foisting a Linux Desktop on the secretary isn't her ability to figure out the interface. Hell, my mom handles BlueCurve on a RedHat box like no one's business. The secretary needs an Office suite that opens Office docs and spreadsheets.
I love OpenOffice. I am writing my dissertation with it. But until OOrg can really open and manage Office file formats (including Macros in spreadsheets) then it will just be ours, not theirs.
Because the only software that will be 100% compatible with Microsoft Office is Microsoft Office.
Are you sure? Even between diferent versions of MS Office I usualy have some compatibility problems.
the ONLY reason to port MSOffice instead of just use openoffice is because you have already written office macros or extensions in VB and don't wanna rewrite em. other than that, its a total waste of time, since OO.o is more stable anyway. i CAN see the attraction in this for some businesses, because they dont wanna re-do their stuff, but what we REALLY want, is a open source port of VB, and then integrate it into OO.o
-ted
sometimes, i wonder if i'm the only conservative on teh intarweb. ah well, back to mah hogs and warmongerin'....
Pointy haired boss, a reference to Dilbert. Its an acronym that really isn't catching on.
Mabye IBM ( & others ) thinks Open Office is to S--L--O--W, big, unweildy etc etc.
It could be a good thing for OO as it might convince them to clean up their code( get the lead out ).
Steve
As if OOo isn't bloated. It runs at about half the speed Office does on my computer. Besides that, what you view as bloat is FUNCTIONALITY to someone else. 90% of people will only use 10% of Office's capabilities, but those 90% will all use a different 10%.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
and IBM really has Ofice for linux, it will make a huge impact on windows sales. Most of the reason Microsoft is able to sell it's other products is because of office. Once office is liberated from windows, most everything else will become irrelevant. Microsoft's decline from leader to just a player will accelerate. contrary to what some believe, they will be around a long time. But their role will change and their fortunes will diminish. Even if Bill and Steve don't know much about technology, they know their business.
10 LET M$ = "Microsoft": REM Slashdot limits subject length, and Penny-Arcade authors have probably never coded in BASIC
To expand on what the others have mentioned: OpenOffice.org not only will handle documents from different versions of M$ Word better than the current version of M$ Word but also will often read corrupted M$ Word documents that make M$ Word crash. Seriously, people have reported here on Slashdot that they use OO.o as a recovery tool for .doc files.
If those Indian programmers are as good as Indian tech support, the Office software they create will be loaded with bugs and full of security holes... That will be a perfect port after all.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
In business, its all about money. (More on this later).
Can MS-Office be ported to Linux technically? I would say yes, because they were able to make a Mac OS X port, which has BSD-Unix underpinnings. Pretty much anything than can be done on BSD can be done on Linux. So no great feat of technology would be involved on getting MS-Office ported to Linux.
Now lets talk about why MS would or would not want to do this. If enough of a market existed (read: Corporate customers clamoring for a native Linux port), MS might have an opportunity to retain those customers (and maybe get a few new customers) and make some money doing it. So there is an opportunity for them there in the office suite market. The danger is this: MS-Office & MS-Windows are mutually supporting monopolies in the corporate world. . As long as Office effectively requires Windows, every corporate desktop sold with Office almost guarantees an accompanying windows license. So double the revenue for M$. A native Linux version of MS-Office would undermine Windows. Once Windows is undermined, then Office itself might be jeopardized because they are mutually supporting.
A native Linux port of MS-Office is just too much of a threat to the MS monopoly structure. MS knows this, so such a port will never see the light of day.
Ironically, except in a few situations, IBM is a very anti-MS Office shop. Those people who work for IBM have had to live with the Lotus Suite of tools for everything they do.
As a former IBMer, I find it hard to believe they would give any support at all to MS Office. Then again, it's a big corporation. This could be a case of some department breaking with company normality.
-ALinux
But it's actually a lightbulb instead of a paperclip.
Even though a FREE alternative is available, you're still bitching about MS making money! What's wrong with you? Is it not OK to make money these days? Are only Indians allowed to make money on programming?
Maybe some of you guys still remember this article on Microsoft's presence at LinuxWorld Expo. It suggests that if Microsoft would have announced a Linux port of Office it would have meant the end of Linux.
It's worth noting that the Lotus source code could be compared to a 200 line "Hello World" in GW-BASIC. From what I've heard it's a mess, and maintaining it would be more difficult than scrapping it (The reason it was "ported" with WINE).
I hate grammar Nazi's.
Yee, but I cannot live without Clippy. From CodeWeavers site: "One thing that does not quite work though is Clippy. While it runs well enough for a screenshot it will cause Word to misbehave. This is why it is disabled by default."
MySQL Error 1040: Can't return sig, Too many connections!
MS Office is allready running in a UNIX environement (MacOS X). So IBM could also port not the win32 version but well the MacOS X version. I m not sure that Apple would be extra happy but the Macintosh business Unit in Redmond could be interressed.
What is the best solution:
I think the second solution could have some advantage for IBM but It will not allow an transition from MS Windows to linux for 95 % of the population who runs on x86
"Use cases are fairy tales..." I. S. 2005
ibm will probably just steal the MS office code like they stole that SCO code...
*wink*
Maybe I'm missing something tearingly obvious here... but everyone seems to be assuming either an emulation layer or totally rewriting the Windows version of Office.
Wouldn't it be a lot easier to start from the version written for OSX?
Visual Basic is proprietary and can not be ported to linux at all
You say it as if it were a bad thing..
This is some guy that's trying to make an impression for a pet project of his, not global IBM strategy. I bet he's in for some angry phone calls from various people, including his boss who'll likely be pestered as to why one of his subordinates is talking to the press about things that isn't his business.
The reason Microsoft hasn't heard anything is probably because he's been talking to people at his level in Microsoft, who has no authority to make any real decisions, just as this guy is unlikely to have.
Has IBM never heard of Crossover Office? Part of my job requires me to use Excel every day. I tried using the OOO spreadsheet program, but the formulas I was using in the spreadsheet (nothing beyond addition and division) weren't moving back and forth properly, and our customers use Excel.
I have a shortcut to Excel on my Gnome toolbar. It's that simple.
Now if they'd only create a native Lotus Notes client port, then I'd be really happy.
... "The reason we don't collaborate with Sun is that they're too small," ...
<sarcasm>Yeah, Sun is not a player.</sarcasm> How big do you have to be for IBM to collaborate with you?
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
But it's not an "acronym". An acronym is an abbreviation in which the letters are said together as a whole -- NATO and AIDS, for example.
PHB, IBM and CPU are not acronyms. They're simply abbreviations (or "initialisms" if you fancy).
One thing that I have been wondering for forever is why IBM has never open sourced Lotus Smartsuite and ported it to Linux. It is a nice little office suite and in my opinion far superior to OpenOffice.
I don't understand the people who are saying open office is so great. I use the latest version (which has been the latest version for a while) and I don't see anything particularly interesting. Maybe in 2.0?
IBM wants to port MS Office to Linux because IBM wants to sell Linux desktops. Bingo! Sun is selling their "java" desktop. IBM can include in their desktop everything that Sun has on theirs plus the MS Office port. Many people like MS Office; many people think they need it. IBM wants to make money. MS makes a lot of money on their MAC Office port. If you had to use one which would be, a desktop with Office port or one without?
I know, the one without, blah blah blah....
It might not be as crazy as it sounds.
Let's assume IBM gets Office running 100% perfect on Linux. Doing so removes a HUGE barrier to Linux acceptance in business. Lots of organizations are actually married to Office more than they are to Windows. Let them keep their Office installations, but move them to Linux, and you end up decimating a huge piece of Microsoft's business.
I think this can be a very good thing.
kill -9 `ps -ef | grep -i clippy | awk '{print $2}'`
I think ciaran_o_riordan has the right take on this. When proprietary software is running (say, by emulation) there is little desire to pursue software freedom.
This is partially because of the ethics the open source movement teaches--practical ends are the goal, not software freedom. When an open source program won't do the job, that movement gives one no reason to reject proprietary alternatives. Ironically, that means the open source movement's philosophy can sometimes advocate for software that is not open source. Once the desire or need for a program is sated, very little interest exists to write an open source replacement.
The free software movement, by contrast, does not have this built-in problem in its philosophy. Non-free software is rejected because (as the name says) it doesn't have the freedoms of free software--put briefly, the freedoms to share and modify the software.
It's not surprising to me that IBM would champion this. The open source movement was started to speak to business desires and it's doing an excellent job of that, even if it means giving up software freedom to achieve that end. Open source software can be a genuine contribution to our community when its advocates work on free software. I'm grateful that many open source advocates do this (IBM, for example, has contributed work to the Linux kernal under the GPL). But this is not always the case.
Digital Citizen
"Blue Linux" does not exist. What we have is Linux Client for E-Bussiness (C4EB), a Linux RH9 desktop that includes IBM apps such as a Lotus Sametime (an excellent Instant Messaging program) client, a Lotus Notes client (Windows version) running under WINE, and a few other things useful in the IBM Intranet.
There are about 20,000 users or so at the moment, and the IBM Linux desktop community is very active. The IBM CIO is extremely supportive: whenever we see a boneheaded internal site requiring MS IE only or other such atrocities, we report it and the Office of the CIO puts pressure on the site's maintainers to toe the line and support Mozilla.
Bottom line: "Blue Linux" = customized RedHat 9. It's hardly our own distro. But IBM is not just promoting Linux and recommending it to customers. We're also eating our own dog food.
We are studying a migration to a Fedora-based C4EB.
IBM wants to make a version of Microsoft Office that runs on Linux. This does not necessarily mean that IBM is going to redistribute a modified version of Microsoft Office. IBM probably will create an emulation layer for Office. IBM's access to the MS Office codebase will just make the job easier. Virtual PC, for example, does just this and the copy of Windows 98 has to be sold separately and intactly.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
If I were a normal company with a product and some company came along and offered to port my application to other platforms for free, I would most likely jump at the idea. However, if you had a monopoly on the desktop OS market and willing to use illegal tactics to guard your share, how would you behave?
MS may have stated in the past that the reason they don't port Office to Linux is that there is 'no demand'. Now with the Linux desktop share challenging the Mac share, thos arguments are being diluted. If IBM were to offer to port it for free, gee... seems like a great deal for any company... unless you are trying ot illegally maintain your monopoly of course.
-- Knowledge shared is power lost. -- Aleister Crowley
I have been an employee at IBM for three years. When I started, all the machines for employees came preloaded with Lotus SmartSuite. It was also preloaded with viewers for various Microsoft Office file formats. If you had a business need for writing Microsoft Office documents yourself, your department could buy a licence for you.
One year ago this changed. Now Office XP is part of the standard platform and is available for download for all employees (via an IBM intranet web-site where you can download all the software that is part of the standard platform) without additional charges for your department.
At least this is the situation for IBM in Europe (EMEA).
Astronomy 1&1: The sun only looks so small, because it is so far away.
In fact, it's rather large!
The only good thing of M$ is, that it loads really fast.
After you install MS Office, Windows loads big portions of it during Windows boot. So your initial boot takes longer, but then your Office apps launch quickly. This tradeoff makes sense for desktop systems with large amounts of RAM, which is all of them these days. But it kind of sucks for laptops, which are booted more often than desktops, and not always to run Office.
I have the Open Office Quickstart Applet running in my GNOME desktop, and this does the same trick for OO.o; large portions of OO.o are preloaded for me. On my laptop, I don't run that. I like having the choice.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
One could make the analogy that this is a similar situation if the government charged an entrance fee to public buildings.
I work at a bank, we do not allow the use of Access for multi-user systems because Access has a tendancy to self-destruct when more then 1 person is using it ...
t able/ap ps/KDE3.x/office/kexi-1.0beta2-update1-win32.exe
You are MUCH better off to get a copy of MySQL and use Kexi (http://www.kexi-project.org/) as you Access like GUI design tool....
Kexi 1.0Beta2 for Win32
http://www.gtlib.cc.gatech.edu/pub/kde/uns
it would be extremely cost ineffective to switch to OO because it is free but pay a consultant $2k for a couple of weeks work
If you have more than about five Microsoft Office licenses, paying a consultant to translate your scripts may in fact prove less expensive than paying Microsoft for the next version.
Why not just pour the effort into openoffice? Using MS Office will just be a licensing mess later down the line. I'm sure MS will love to have parts of its codebase used in Linux so they can cause trouble like SCO is right now. Uptill now, Linux has been going much cleaner than BSD and has had few issues in the court, and noone could touch it legally.
openoffice can open Word Excel etc docs just fine, and if its streamlined further, optimised, ported everywhere etc, its already better than MS Office with about the same interface.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
No thanks
"Klaatu, verada, necktie!" -Ash
I have been working for IBM for almost a year now, and have yet to see a copy of MS Office anywhere in the facility. Granted it is easier to get a brand new computer than a copy of software, I find this interesting that IBM plans to "port" MS Office to Linux. They have been pushing Lotus products at our location, and rightly so. Of course Lotus does not seem to be in comparison with OpenOffice in terms of Excel, Word, and Powerpoint. So the only Lotus product I use is Notes. OpenOffice works so much better for me, and it is easier to get than a Corporate copy of Office in these settings. Why not improve on an already stellar office suite? Or at least endorse Lotus products for Linux!
I'm no DBA, but I know enough to design a proper database and write applications that use said database, but what I simply don't have time for is creating data-entry forms, generating reports, etc. Someone else does that. Someone else using MS Access. He's just barely "computer literate," but using Access he creates very nice reports and data-entry forms.
There's a whole book on creating data-entry apps for MySQL, using C/C++ and GTK. Yeah, I have time for that shit. I have 30 other projects that need to be done yesterday; I think I'll continue to let the windows-weenie handle everything but actually designing the databases.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
If I were IBM, I would stick to Open Office.
It's already so similar, stable, and well done, it's worthwhile to invest. Here's what I see it needing:
- Good Mac OS X port (get Apple on it's side)
- Some UI polish, needs graphics, UI cleanup, streamlining
- Slight improvements to compatibility with MS Office, especially Power Point.
It's already a pretty solid product. It's got some great bonuses (free PDF output for example). What it needs is some cleanup.
IBM could easily provide this. Then have an MS free product that could help bring Linux to the desktop.
Apple would be wise to invest in this as well I might add. Get rid of more MS dependancy.
Apple's UI experience would be good as well.
Mainframes do I/O using a "Channel Program". This is a sequence of commands assembled by your system software to perform an I/O task. The task may be made up of hundreds of I/O commands. (which use the Single-Byte-Command-Set architecture.) After the I/O program is built, a single CPU instruction (start subchannel) begins I/O program execution. The processor is not interrupted until the execution of the program is completed. A "channel processor" (these days ususally a PowerPC chip) handles all the actual work.
SCSI is loosely based on the architecture, but does not have the concept of a channel program, so it has none of the CPU conservation benefits.
The advantage of this whole setup is that the box can be doing fantastic amounts of I/O streams simultaneously, since the CPUs do not have to coordinate all of it. We all know that Disk is WAAAYYY slower than memory, so this way you can be doing useful things with a large number of I/O paths until you finally exhuast your quite substantial processor resources. UNIX-style architectures bog down at far slower I/O loads.
The disadvantage is that it blows for charachter-by-character interactive (i.e. Telnet) use, due to the overhead involved in creating the channel program. Transactions actually do okay, as the overhead isn't that terrible, compared with the work usually required to process the transaction itself.
The other disadvantage is you need an expensive box to just get an admin console, since the ONLY way to get I/O in and out is this huge channel system, a RS-232 just doesn't work. (These days, it is an xSeries Pizza Box w/ an ESCON card. It used to be this behemoth about the size of a dorm-room refrigerator.)
SirWired