A Fresh Look at IBM 3270 Information Display System

Classic mainframe display system from the past that was in many ways ahead of its time.

Owing to its minicomputer roots, Unix Shells are line-oriented. Some "visual shells" existed, but Unix largely remained on the command line. IBM mainframe OSes offer the ISPF menu system, which is still in use.

My hypothesis is that there is no single reason for this but a combination of established practice, the type of user community, heterogeneous terminal support, fragmented software landscape, and the advent of GUIs.
#unix #shell #terminal #tui #ibm3270

Mainframe chicks use VM/370 with FORTRAN and COBOL

https://toobnix.org/w/9cq7c42qyLZ9bXhJP1e2ua

Mainframe chicks use VM/370 with FORTRAN and COBOL

PeerTube

On the topic of #retro #lisp for, while trying to enknowledge myself about Xerox AI Workstations viz #interlisp-d , I happened across https://github.com/marcoxa/CL3270 ; a current/two year old #ibm3270 backend slash toolkit.

This is interesting because #gopher #rfc1436 defines T items as pointing to a tn3270 session.

So I could just talk to my #CommonLisp repl through x3270(1) and that CL3270. I'm getting the sinking feeling someone told me to do this before...

Comparing marcoxa:main...hanshuebner:sbcl · marcoxa/CL3270

A simple 3270 library for Common Lisp. Contribute to marcoxa/CL3270 development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHub
One thing I miss from the 3270 terminals is that carriage return and enter (aka send) was two different keys on the keyboard. That's probably the only thing I miss too, but it was a very useful distinction!

#ibm-3270 #retrocomputing #terminal #oldschool
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