Hi,

We believe to have identified two (somewhat related) potential problems with the Rumba emulation software for 3270 devices.

a) As far as we can tell, RUMBA does NOT emulate 3290 terminals, which apparently were the only devices ever supporting explicit "Alpha" partitions. That limitation is perfectly acceptable and indeed typical of (all?) terminal emulators. After all, today's graphical operating systems offer the much better ability to open any number of multiple emulator windows or instances, each using various/differing characteristics.

However, the problem is that in response to a device capability query (a WSF Query command), Rumba will NOT just correctly report the implicit partition (supported by all 3270 devices), but FALSELY report available "Alpha Partition" support. Other emulators (including IBM's PC/3270), will NOT report "Alpha Partition" support, because that would only apply to 3290 devices (which are not being emulated).

b) If a mainframe application relies on Rumba's device capability enumeration and in response then attempts to actually send a WSF Create Partition command, the emulation will fail (presumingly because Rumba doesn't actually offer that capability, even though had reported it!)

After the WSF Create Parition data stream causes a Program Check, the terminal is left in standard screen size.

I have confirmed this behavior on two different IBM mainframe sites.

I believe the correct action to be:

In response to a WSF Query, do NOT report support for "Alpha Partitions", since none is actually emulated.

The following CECI sequence should produce the rejected WSF Create Partition scenario:

CECI SEND FR(&WSF) LEN(32) WAIT STRFIELD
F2 (HEX), F3 (VAR), Enter:
&WSF         00032   [hit ENTER]
Place cursor below &WSF      [hit ENTER]
0004038000120C000000001B00840000
0000001B0084000A4000F103E6E2C6A2