August 31

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What is the best IBMi (AS400) 5250 Terminal Emulator?

By NickLitten

August 31, 2015

FREE, 5250, console, emulator, terminal

What is the best IBMi (AS400) 5250 Terminal Emulator?

The IBM i System (aka i5 aka iSeries aka AS/400) uses something called 5250 to stream its data to a terminal, often called a green screen. You’ve seen this clunk old terminals in black and white scifi movies – well we still use them. Kind of. But we use a terminal emulators (software which emulates the functions of those old terminals) to type commands into a command line interface using windows/linux/mac whatever.

If you are trying to connect to an i5-iSeries-AS/400, you probably want a telnet client that handles 5250. This is called a TN5250 client.

Before we get the to the free stuff

My 5250 Emulator of choice is Mochasoft

This is a commercial product but looks nice and I’ve used it for years. It works with every version of windows and does exactly what it says on the tin. It’s lightweight and simple to use so checkout (https://www.mochasoft.dk) for their TN5250 client. At time of writing it is $25 per client.

Me. Just Now.

Having said that – We all love free stuff right?

Free 5250 Emulator

Sourceforge has an open-source, freeware TN5250. You can download it and learn more at tn5250.sourceforge.net It is small (less than 1 mb) and installs very quickly…. and it’s #free.

After installation, you should have a desktop icon named TN5250.

If you want to watch a video of some scruffy English bloke downloading it, installing it and connecting to an IBM i System then watch it here

Free 5250 emulator

I suggest two configuration changes to make:

You can use it like this – just try it!

Or you can make a couple of little tweaks toi the layout, which I prefer, like this.

+resize_fonts

Now we can create a config.file to store our most used connection info. Use the MS-DOS editor to create a new file called tn5250rc by typing:

edit tn5250rc

Set all of your TN5250 options in this file. For example, if you wanted to create a display called FRED1 which
connects to an as400 called iseries.sample.com, you’d type this:

profile1 {
host = iseries.sample.com
env.DEVNAME=FRED1
}

Now that you’ve created this, you can utilize those settings just by typing:

tn5250 profile1

Be careful of capitalization. “profile1” is not the same as “Profile1” and that’s different from “PROFILE1”.

You can set any of tn5250’s settings in the tn5250rc file. Here’s a more sophisticated example:

profile1 {
 host = ssl:iseries.sample.com
 env.DEVNAME=FRED1
 env.TERM=IBM-3477-FC
 font_80=System
 font_132=Terminal
 +ssl_verify_server
 ssl_ca_file=c:\certs\ca\as400_ca.pem
 trace=c:\windows\temp\profile1-trace.txt
}

profile2 {
 host = ssl:as400.example.com
 env.DEVNAME=DSP51
 +ruler
 env.TERM=IBM-3179-2
 map=285
 ssl_cert_file=c:\certs\client\fredclient.pem
 ssl_pem_pass=wilma
}

printer {
 host = ssl:as400.example.com
 env.DEVNAME=PRT01
 env.IBMMFRTYPMDL = *HP46
}

env.IBMMSGQNAME = QSYSOPR
env.IBMMSGQLIB = *LIBL

(that is an underscore chracter between “+resize” and “fonts”) This will allow you to resize the window.

In the folder “Program Files” in the sub-folder “TN5250” is a file named “TN5250rc”. (C:\Program Files (x86)\TN5250) Change it (one way is to right-click, selct open-with and select notepad or Wordpad)

map=37
font_80=Terminal
Terminal emulator tn 5250

Make it look something like this:

map=37
host=192.168.0.1
font_80=MS Gothic-12x24

(Instead of 192.168.0.1, enter your host ID or TCP/IP address)

The font_80 line changes the font to MS Gothic and the 12×24 defines the width and height of the window. Change those until the window is the size that you like.

That’s it. Double-click the TN5250 icon and you should see an i5-iSeries-AS/400 display terminal session.

This application is very full-featured. It also includes a Linux version.

Go to TN5250.sourceforge.net to learn more.


UPDATE 2020: Download Free 5250- Emulators

Read my latest review of 5250 Emulators and how to download other free Emulators here

Ibm i acs training courses

Free or Opensource 5250 Emulators

85% Overall

The TN5250J java application is an IBM i 5250 terminal emulator written in Java. Originally created because there was no AS4000/iSeries terminal emulator for Linux with features like continued edit fields, GUI windows, cursor progression fields etc.

85%
Speed
85%
quality
85%
cost
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