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IBM IRMA 3270 Emulation Board (56X4927) Software Wanted

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mtboody

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Hello - I have an IBM IRMA 3270 Emulation Board (56X4927) that needs software/drivers. Can anyone help in providing a way to find this software? The boards are for a PC. Any help is very much appreciated.
 
mtboody said:
Hello - I have an IBM IRMA 3270 Emulation Board (56X4927) that needs software/drivers. Can anyone help in providing a way to find this software? The boards are for a PC. Any help is very much appreciated.
Click to expand...

To be pedantic, IBM and IRMA are two different things. They both talk to 3270 coax, but didn't use the same shared memory protocols. DCA IRMA could do either its own or IBM's protocol in their firmware.
IBM's naming for the 3270 emulation software is also confusing. There were also several generations of IBM coax boards that supported extended resolutions and color functionality of the multiple generations
of terminals. Maybe someone has a mapping of the cards and software by date, but I don't have it handy. There was also a separate product that could simulate the whole 3274 establishment controller through
an SDLC interface card, but that is a completely different animal.
 
Thank you for the info. I have downloaded the software and manual and will see if they work with th board I have. It is an IBM 56X4927 board manufactured by IBM for the older PCs (non-PCI). I have a 3174 wth the disks. Looks like one disk and possibly drive are bad (it left a ring on the media). I'm trying to get a 3278 Monitor and Keyboard communicating with a linux server so I'm hoping to bypass and sell off the 3174 if I can get that unit working. All excellent info here - thank you.
 
Thank you - I will give it a try with my card. Very much appreciate the links.
 
mtboody said:
Thank you for the info. I have downloaded the software and manual and will see if they work with th board I have. It is an IBM 56X4927 board manufactured by IBM for the older PCs (non-PCI). I have a 3174 wth the disks. Looks like one disk and possibly drive are bad (it left a ring on the media). I'm trying to get a 3278 Monitor and Keyboard communicating with a linux server so I'm hoping to bypass and sell off the 3174 if I can get that unit working. All excellent info here - thank you.
Click to expand...

Have you seen this? https://github.com/lowobservable/oec

An interface for the coax and som Python code for connecting to TN3270 compatible hosts. Haven’t tried it myself, though.
 
My goal is to connect the Terminal and Keyboard to a Linux server. I have several options I am pursuing and my best seems to be the github project by lowoversrable. Originally I thought that reverse engineering an Irma board might be the easiest. But using the simple chipset and Arduino appears to be the best documented approach. Thanks for your help here today.
 
Hi - Thanks. This is exactly what I am tyring to do. I've ordered the parts suggested (the harder to find stuff on Ebay and I'm ordering the remaining items from a supplier). I'm probably going to avoid creating the professional PCB and just go old-school with wires and experiementer type board. This should work perfectly for my goal of connecting the 3278 to a Linux server. Thanks for the suggestion and help!
 
That sounds like an ISA-bus version. I have both IBM 3270 Connection and IRMA III adapters for the MCA (PS/2) bus and IBM Personal Communications (a.k.a. PerCom) versions (4.1 and above, for example) usually support most 3270 Coax connection adapters, if properly configured, as it's just a question of playing with the memory-mapped buffer, AFAIK.
 
I'm looking into the Github project and that should get me connected if all goes smoothly. Thank you for info.
 
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