> no ASCII-native OSes for the 360/370 Except, of course, OS/360. /s
I love explaining to squatty-box kids how the original hardware had the ASCII PSW bit but it was never used, repurposed for S/370. Related: I can't count the number of times I've said "31-bit mode" and someone said "You mean 32-bit?" and I've had to explain. -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Jay Maynard Sent: Friday, June 19, 2026 9:10 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Two TSO terminal I/O from Rexx questions It would require talking with an ASCII-native host, and I doubt any of them ever implemented a 3270 driver. AFAIK, there certainly were no ASCII-native OSes for the 360/370 (plus or minus UTS or AIX/370, which ran under VM anyway). On Fri, Jun 19, 2026 at 7:40 AM Phil Smith III <[email protected]> wrote: > I am astounded. Did a ton of 3270 stuff back in the day and have ZERO > memory of it ever mentioning ASCII! > > Weirdly, it's all over that book--but it never seems to discuss what > they mean about using it. There's ONE index entry, which points to an > entry about structured fields, where it says simply: > > "Note: The use of structured fields requires that the full 8 bits of a > byte be used; therefore, WSF is not supported in an ASCII > environment." > > Makes me wonder if anybody ever used that support?! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
