Introduction to 3270 Clients
BM Personal Communications (PCOMM) or Tom' Brenann's Vista TN3270 clients are used to connect a z/OS mainframe and TSO.

During the period between 1950 and 1970s, there were no personal computers or no Internet or no TCP/IP. Mainframes used a character binary code called ECBDIC decades before ASCII and Unicode ever existed.  Application programmers, system programmers, and users would communicate to the mainframe using 3270 ECBDIC, text-based, dumb terminal, and the SNA communication protocol. You cannot play computer games or use Microsoft Office on a 3270 dumb terminal. But 3270 terminals or were very efficient and were more functional  than using punch cards.

In the 1990s IBM introduced a proprietary version named PCOMM as a Windows 3270-client.  Later Tom Brennan introduced a 3270-clients which may be installed a wider variety of other operating systems.

The functions of PCOMM 3270 emulator are to:

1) Enable zOS users to use the TCP/IP communication protocol to connect to a remote IBM mainframe and TSO.
2) Convert Windows ASCII characters typed on your keyboard to ECBDIC characters so that TSO can understand your commands.
3) Convert IBM ECBDIC characters sent by TSO to an ASCII character so that the character may be displayed on your Windows computer.
4) To interface with function of the Windows client operating system. PCOMM does not support MAC OS or Linux. (There are other TN3270 clients listed later.)

RMU VMWARE VIEW

You cannot install PCOMM on a MAC Computer unless the MAC has Windows installed.  You can used RMU VMWare View to remotely access a RMU Lab computer which support PCOOMM.  VMWare view has both PComm and IBM RDz installed. You can install a VMWare View client on either your Windows or MAC computer.  For more details about RMU VMware View visit  http://view.rmu.edu. It is recommended to use the HTTP version.  The RMU or RESNET Help Desk may assist you with this process. The RMU Help desk is 412-397-2211 and is located in the second floor of Hale. The ResNet Help desk is 412-397-2299