message from andrew (was 3270 controller simulation)

[Al Kossow]

-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: 3270 controller simulation
Date: Mon, 18 Nov 2019 19:43:24 -0600
From: Andrew Kay
To: aek at bitsavers.org

Hi Al,

I'm waiting for approval to join the cctalk mailing list but I heard
on IRC you were interested in my project so hope you don't mind me
reaching out to you directly.

Unfortunately I don't have much in the way of useful documentation
other than the code itself right now - I am planning on putting some
documentation on the protocol together as well as a basic write-up on
what I've discovered.

Anyway - everything I've built so far can be found at
https://github.com/lowobservable/oec and the linked projects (for the
coax interface and TN3270 library).

It's still pretty basic at this point but can do enough TN3270 and
VT100 emulation to be usable.  Here is a more recent photograph
showing it connected to the Master the Mainframe server -
https://i.redd.it/1kpbe3muvbz31.jpg.

For the coax interface I'm using two obsolete ICs from National
Semiconductor - the DP8340 and DP8341 and using an Arduino to connect
these to a PC.  I was really excited to see somebody on the mailing
list mention they were working on an FPGA interface - building an
interface that didn't depend on obsolete components is my plan for
next year but I have to learn some electronics first.

Please feel free to copy the above to the mailing list - I definitely
want to join (do you know if it is possible to join with a GMail
account, the last I heard was I was waiting to be approved), I had no
idea there were so many people interested in 3270 things :-)


Andrew