Re: PC connection via twinax ?

["Jerome Draper" <jdraper@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Some vendors reverse engineered IBM's stuff but the engineers at Synapse
built their own from scratch.  This was possible because their founder and
lead engineer, Joe Frank, was a senior architect of the SSP operating system
on the S36 and is also an incredibly knowledgeable technical individual.

For example, where IBM's twinax card gobble(s) hardware interrupt requests
and others used DMA channels, and/or DOS TSR's, Joe designed a
microprocessor driven (Morotola 6502) twinax card that was like putting a
computer in your computer.  This design factor insulates Synapse's card from
the inner workings of the PC and Bill's Windows program resulting in no
lockups or BSOD's.

Synapse attaches to the same AS400 ports that CAE does.

I believe the twinax spec is published by IBM.  I remember that IBM charged
$100,000 for documentation to internal AS400 workings   Then, when Microsoft
wanted to subscirbe, IBM withdrew support completely with the thinking that
since they didn't want MS to have it nobody could have it.

I believe that the AS400 would be a better system today if IBM would have
been more forthcoming as to delivering system documentation to inventive
technical folks.

Jerry

>
> >Synapse only charges $89 for their IP Client Display that has over 20
years
> >of 5250 in it (they were the brains behind SSI, Emerald, and Andrew
before
> >and suppliers of most of the first 5250 APPC clients:  NetSoft,
Rally!, ).
>
> Jerome,
>
> Do you know how much Synapse and the other 5250 vendors rely on
undocumented info, tech info disclosed by ibm for a price, reverse
engineering or just the 5494 functional reference manual to implement their
5250 products?
>
> For example, do the 3rd party versions of cae connect to the same server
ports on the as400 that cae does?
>
> Back in the day of twinax cards, what undocumented info was needed to get
such a card to emulate a 5250 terminal?
>
> When you say synapse was brains behind the well known vendors, is that
because they reverse engineered the ibm 5250 card?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Steve Richter
>
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