New IBM Twinax Adpter... Maybe!!!! -- MIDRANGE-L

Uhm..... Let me see.

I got a letter dated June 11 that said if I owned a PCI Busmaster adapter, 
I should call this 800 number for a replacement 5250 PCI card. (This is 
from IBM.)

So, I tabled it until this week. I called, and then on Friday this packages 
shows up. It's the new card.

I open it and looked at the circuitry. I noticed that the card was actually 
changed. Not much, but there is a new I/C chip.
So I installed in my Aptiva Model S90.

I also took care in installing the driver according to the directions. 
Nothing unusual, but I didn't want to use the old card's driver or that 
CA/400 Twinax driver.

So I installed the software, rebooted. It autoconfigured, said "Already got 
a 5250 config. Want me to replace it?" I said "yes", and clicked away. Then 
it was done. No fanfare, just the Windows 95 screen. So I rebooted again 
(the poor man's fix-all).

I then clicked on my emulation ICON. Now remember folks, it's been 6 months 
since I've been able to get CA/400 for Windows 95 to stay up for more that 
3 minutes. And typically, it only lasts about 30 seconds...

So, as I said, I click on the PC emulation icon, and this funny thing 
happened... A 5250 emulation screen appeared. Something called the "sign on 
display". What? Where my eyes deceiving me? They had glanced on a sight not 
seen for months. A non-dumb terminal 5250 display.  Wow!

Okay, so how long did is stay up? Well, I've had it running for over 24 
hours with all kinds of multiple session, file transfers (even though File 
transfer doesn't work all the time, that's not the card's fault) and so on. 
Connected with a Twinax adapter via bailon (spell?).

So, this card is part of the new family of IBM 5250 Express adapters. If 
you can't get your Twinax to connect, call IBM and tell them you want this 
new Express adapter. They will replace it for free (if it's under 
warranty). All PCI 5250 cards from IBM are under warranty so you should 
have a problem.  The 800 number I called is:  800 266-763

I really can't believe it. While Client Access/400 is still a piece of crap 
(in my opinion), all this time, my frustration was being caused by the IBM 
emulation card, not the Aptiva (well not too much by the Aptiva) and not by 
the AS/400.

At least now I can get that second dumb terminal off my desk and get some 
real work down. Many has this been frustrating! As you all know....

An early notice that my card was probably bad, would have saved a lot of 
gray hair and a lot of hair loss. But it's fixed now. And I think the 
person that figured out this problem should get an IBM Fellowship! Plus, 
IBM's program for replacing the bad cards renews my belief that IBM may not 
be going out of business and the AS/400 will survive... okay I'm being 
emotional... This was a big deal to me.


Bob Cozzi
Bob@rpgdev.net
http://www.rpgdev.net


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