Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!nrl-cmf!mailrus!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!UMDD.BITNET!BRUCE
From: BRUCE@UMDD.BITNET (Bruce Crabill)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip.ibmpc
Subject: Re: Printing with TN3270
Message-ID: <8804010727.aa19247@Louie.UDEL.EDU>
Date: 1 Apr 88 12:10:44 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 22

Actually, it should be possible.  There are such things as 3270 printers and
the hosts talk to them using 3270 data streams.  In release 5 of CP, the
LDSF (Logical Device Support Facility) (which is what most VM TELNET servers
use to create pseudo terminals) was enhanced to support the following
printers: 3286, 3284, 3286, 3287, 3288, 3289, and 3289 model 4.  CP was
enhanced in many other ways to support these including allowing a logical
device to be attached to a virtual machine.  Using these facilities, it would
be fairly easy to modify the TELNET server running VM to support these
printers (on the order of a few line addition to a table).  After connecting
to the server, I think you could direct your COPY key to the logical device
that was created.  How one indentifies which logical device was yours, is
not clear to me at the moment, but it could be worked out.  You could even
attach the logical device to RSCS and use it as a remote printer.  That has
a lot of possibilities.  I'll have to do some playing around with this
concept.  But the bottom line is, the data streams and at least VM will
support 3270 type printers connected thru TCP/IP (Roger is probably more
interested in MVS, but I would guess that something simular is available
there too).  On the PC end, all you would need is a 3270 printer emulator
(which is a whole lot easier than a 3270 terminal emulator).  I think there
might be a market for such a facility.

                                       Bruce