AS/400 Device Naming in Ericom Products

PowerTerm InterConnect allows TN5250 emulation through direct TCP/IP connection.

PowerTerm InterConnect now supports device naming under AS/400 over TCP/IP. The technology offers users the advanced capacity to specify known, user-defined device names for TN5250 display and print sessions when working with direct TCP/IP.

Advantages of Device Naming

The advantage of device naming is that the user assigns names to display and print sessions. Known names are required for certain applications, and also enable a system administrator to monitor who is logged on to the system. In addition, users are able to designate known, named printers for sending print jobs to local or networked printers.

The benefit of PowerTerm InterConnect's implementation of device naming is that it allows users to work with TCP/IP only, without the need for an SNA server or router software, which provides a huge cost savings for customers and less overhead for system administrators. The only thing users need to load is the TCP/IP stack, and if they are using Windows 95 or NT, then TCP/IP is already loaded.

Using Device Naming

Using the device name feature of display and printer sessions is easy.

1. Open a PowerTerm InterConnect session and select 5250 Display from
   Terminal | Setup | Emulation. Click OK.
2. Go to Communication | Connect and fill in the Host Name of the AS/400 host.
3. Fill in a Device Name for the emulation session. This name can be anything the user wants, up to 10 letters.
4. If the a user is going to use multiple sessions, then that user can enter "devicename+" in the Device Name field, and each new session will be assigned a new name automatically, incremented by 1. For example, if someone were to enter the Device Name as John+ then the first session will be called John1, the second will automatically be assigned the name John2, and so on.
5. Click on Connect. The AS/400 session will begin, and will be assigned the name specified in step 3.

How to print using Device Naming

1. Open a session and choose 5250 Printer from Terminal | Setup.
2. In Terminal | Setup | Printer, set Print Device to File and Device File Name to Lpt1, although selecting Print Manager will also work.
3. Click OK
4. In Communication | Connect, fill in the Host Name of the AS/400 host.
5. Fill in a Device Name for the printer session. This name can be anything the user wants, up to 10 letters.
6. Connect, and leave the printer session open. The AS/400 will automatically create a queue with the device name specified in step 5.
7. Open a 5250 display session. Send print jobs to the queue created by the AS/400.

Compatibility

The Device Naming feature works with version 4.3 of the AS/400 operating system as is. Versions 3.2, 3.7, 4.1 and 4.2 require PTFs from IBM. There are no PTFs available for other versions. The PTFs required for Device Naming over TCP/IP in TN5250 emulation are as follows: (The information below is from IBMs APAR II 10918, which was last updated December 10, 1998).