I agree that the inability to share the "Integrated 3270" among multiple concurrent sessions is unfortunate and that it would be a useful enhancement to list that restriction. Off the top of my head I can see that the "ownership" of the keyboard will need to be resolved in some way, that is only one session should be allowed to provide keyboard inputs (i.e. cursor movement, attention keys, etc.). Otherwise each session could be "fighting" with the other about what is being done :-( I don't think this problem is insurmountable and in fact I can think of a couple of different design approaches that could be used to solve it. Anyone who has used one of the Windows based conferencing tools has seen how this can be resolved.
Irregardless of the aforementioned restriction the use case of an Operator/Sysprog performing an IPL and wanting to be able to see whatever messages might be produced without worrying about "losing" them (to a reset resulting from a disabled wait state being loaded) is best served by using the "Integrated 3270". And because of the designed "preference order" (thank you Rick) that Jim Mulder has confirmed (thank you Jim) it is as simple as activating the "Integrated 3270" before the Load (IPL) is performed. No need to change the IODF (to remove any NIP consoles), the presence (or absence) of NIP consoles in the IODF does not make any difference, the "Integrated 3270" will be used (for NIP in z/OS 2.1) if it is active. Testing/backoff is simply a matter of acvtivating/deactivating (at the HMC) before you Load/IPL nothing else need be done, try it you'll like it :-) In the interest of full disclosure I will mention that there are some differences in the use of the "Integrated 3270" as a result of the keyboard mapping. I don't remember the specific details (and I don't have access to a system to confirm them) but my memory is that certain 3270 keys (e..g Clear, PA1, PA2, etc.) not found on "modern" keyboards require multiple keyboard inputs. The good news is that for simple text input and the Enter key life is simple :-) and the other good news is those two functions (combined with the text display) is all you really need to effectively use a z/OS console (both during NIP and beyond) :-) John McDowell ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
