Re: OS400 Telnet

Hello Chris,

You wrote:
>Has any one been able to use the Telnet Client in OS400 to talk purely
>EBCDIC?  I am trying to use it to test a socket server that does not need
>to translate from ASCII to EBCDIC.

The Telnet protocol is generally ASCII.  The protocol does allow for
extensions which allow a client and server to negotiate binary
transmission (which could result in EBCDIC data flow and indeed does for
TN5250) along with many other variables.  See RFC 856 (or replacement) for
IAC WILL TRANSMIT-BINARY and IAC DO TRANSMIT-BINARY negotiation.

>All data is in EBCDIC but the Telnet Client always send data in ASCII.  I
>have tried using several of the translate in/out table parms, setting
>them to *LIBL/QEBCDIC but to no avail.

If you create a translation table that converts EBCDIC to EBCDIC
(essentially no translation) and specified that on the AS/400 TELNET
command you would possibly be OK.  However, that is effectively what using
QEBCDIC is doing.

You could also write your server to negotiate TRANSMIT-BINARY to indicate
that no data translation will occur.  Normally that is used to handle 5250
and 3270 emulation but should be valid in all modes.  The AS/400 Telnet
client may handle that since it accepts data in EBCDIC but a PC Telnet
client will not help since it expects data in ASCII and TN3270 or TN5250
clients will expect the responses as a correctly formatted, encapsulated
data stream (in EBCDIC)

See RFCs: 854, 856, 885, 1091, 1205, and 1572 (or their later
replacements) for the Telnet negotiation details.  However, if my EBCDIC
translation table suggestion doesn't work then I think it would be easier
to write a simple client that talked to your server for testing purposes
or change your server to expect ASCII data (then it could receive data
from any client).

Regards,
Simon Coulter.
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