re: Cisco and IBM protocols
If you're really interested, all of this is exhaustively documented
under the umbrella of Cisco's "IBM Feature Set". There's a *lot* here
under the hood, but the last time I looked (admittedly, a while) a
number of folks had web sites that documented the correct incantations
for Hercules and common hardware.
You can bridge between TR (and FDDI) and ethernet on a Cisco,
generally for non-routable protocols (e.g. NetBIOS); see:
'translational bridging'. If you're trying to get these protocols
across an intermediary 'alien' network (like the corp FDDI backbone,
or the Internet), there are things like DLSw.
If you're trying to get TCP/IP from TR to ethernet and vice versa,
routing generally works better/is simpler (IME), but Cisco has all
sorts of bizarre encapsulation/translation features for different use
cases should you need them.
You can also make the router look like an SNA concentrator (PU?).
KJ