• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

IBM 5394 info needed

NeXT

NeXT

Veteran Member
Joined
Oct 22, 2008
Messages
8,200
Location
Kamloops, BC, Canada
I have one of these twinax controllers and I'm trying to figure out:

1) Where to locate the system diskette for it

2) What the system interface is. It's got a DB25 port for connecting to the computer however I can find no real documentation on the controller and I doubt it's either parallel or serial. Only thing I can find about it is that you can talk to it over SNA.
 
From what I can find, the info on that controller is a tad cryptic. What I can say though is that of the Twinax 5250 cards I've seen, most seem to have a 15-pin connector, not a 25. But I bet you are right, it's probably not serial or parallel but some other special/proprietary connection type.

Not sure if you have seen this page, but there seems to be some info down at the bottom:
http://www.argecy.com/index.php?pfile=5394.html

I certainly didn't find much on the IBM website!

Good luck,
Clay
 
That leads me to believe that it's an EIA-232 port, which is essentially a serial port. At worst case it's an X.21 interface.
question is, if it's just serial, how is the controller making the computer handle multiple terminals at once over one serial port? I'll figure that out later. Still can't find the diskette though.
 
15-pins are often AUI (in case somebody didn't know already). SDLC / HDLC often used serial connections for transfer medium, so V.24 / RS-232 / EIA-232 very often.
 
SNA is a layered architecture like TCP/IP. Remember not so long ago you could use dial-up networking and a modem and a serial port which would allow multiple Telnet sessions to connect over one serial connection. In fact if you could get dial-up routers, so my CISCO 2600 router will allow my network to connect over ADSL or a PPP Dial-UP link and still connect the whole network.

However although the port on the the 5394 is serial it is asynchronous port and it runs SDLC or X.25 protocols. This also allow multiple terminals to connect over the same serial link. There is some info here:-

http://www.protocols.com/pbook/sna.htm#SDLC

You may be able to connect it directly to a S/34, S/36 , S/38 or "AS/400 Family" box, but you would need a cross over cable. You may also need a modem eliminator as asynchronous connection usually uses the modem clocks to sync the data, e.f.g.:-

http://www.airlinx.com/products.cfm/product/7-47-169.htm

but it may be the AS/400 or the 5394 can generate the necessary signals.

You probably can't connect it to a PC as normal PC ports won't talk HDLC. You can get cards that will talk HDLC but these were most often used to with with IBM or Microsoft SNA Server (later Host Integration Server) whoch allowed a network of PCs to appear to a Mid-range box as a ermote 3270/3174 or 5250/5394 controller.
 
The idea was that since SNA is supported under AIX I would attach it through my RS/6000 as I'll never own a System /3x or AS/400 simply because I would never know how to run the thing. I know that X.25/HDLC microchannel interfaes are also available and they're cheap to get.

Again though, I'm wandering into territory I have never been in so I have no clue if I can make all the connections and it still would not work.
 
So does AIX have any applications that support 5250 terminals? Again AIX has SNA support so it can act as a node so or as a peer2peer applicatiosn server, not so you can connect 5250 terminals to it.
 
Like I said TN5250 is a client. He has 5250 terminal he wants to connect to something! AIX is basically one of the UNIX distros (I forget which) hacked to include some support code. It still needs VT100 or X displays...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top