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Although this document includes some technical concepts that may be confusing at first glance, the payoff for digesting the concepts will be your greatly enhanced effectiveness in using BASIS applications. When you know how to control the look of your screen (field colors, color and location of the message line, function key colors, etc.), how to navigate around the screen quickly and efficiently, and how to use your keyboard to perform time-saving tasks, you will find that your work within BASIS progresses more quickly and easily.
In order to understand some of the discussion below with regard to how your screen looks and how your keyboard functions, we first need to begin with a basic overview of our mainframe environment. BASIS applications live on a mainframe computer and run under CICS and Adabas TPF. These terms may mean nothing to you, but what they signify to you as a user is that you use your PC or Macintosh desktop computer to interface with a computer application running under a very complex and sophisticated mainframe environment. By itself, without a standard interface, your desktop computer would be unable to communicate properly.
The interface you use is called a 3270 telnet (a TCP/IP protocol) program. These programs come in many different flavors, with different capabilities. But before we discuss the various capabilities, you must first understand a bit about 3270 emulation.
The term "3270 emulation" refers to the fact that these software programs interface with mainframe applications by making it look to the mainframe as if your desktop computer is an IBM 3270 terminal (sometimes called dumb terminals). These terminals were the original devices used to connect with mainframe computers many years ago. Typically, they consisted of a monitor (display) and a keyboard, and did not have their own internal processing capability. Once this sort of connection is established, you are in effect no longer using the 486, Pentium, or PowerMac in front of you, but are instead working within the rules and confines of the 3270 environment.
One final note should be made here about 3270 terminals. The 3270 screen is made up of fields, either protected or modifiable. The terminals operate in blockmode which means that the mainframe (BASIS) does not respond to any entries or changes you make to these onscreen fields until you submit the updated screen, usually by pressing Enter or a PF key. This is different from many PC-based spreadsheet, database or word-processing applications you may use where on-screen changes take immediate effect.
The term 3270 is a generic one since there are actually three basic types of 3270 connections supported by BASIS, each with different capabilities.
| 3270 | The simplest of the three. 3270 terminals are monochromatic (one-color) displays able to show only normal or intensified (bold) text. |
| 3278 | Adds reverse video and underlined text. Among the development team and veteran BASIS users, the reverse video (or reverse highlighting) is a favorite since it allows the user to quickly determine via visual cues which fields are modifiable, required, etc. |
| 3279 | The most capable of the emulations. It adds the ability to display text in seven different colors. |
You can set your 3270 type, and control the 3279 colors (if supported by your emulation software) through the BASIS user profile screen (accessed by pressing PF6 on the logon screen). See "Maintaining Your User Profile" for further information about customizing the screen.
Generally speaking, if your software and monitor support it, you are encouraged to use 3279 mode since it offers the greatest control over the look of your screen. This is usually available while using a Network or PPP connection, but will not be available while using a non-PPP, dial-up connection.
Keyboard mapping is important to you because you need to know which keys on your desktop machine are being used to emulate the 3270 keys the mainframe is expecting. Below we cover some common function keys and other special use keys. If a BASIS program tells you to press PF10, this could literally be any key or any combination of keys on your machine. Generally, default keyboard mapping for emulation programs will use your PC or Macintosh F (function) keys to represent the mainframe PF (programmable function) keys, but other 3270 keys are not so clear. When you wish to move your cursor from one line to the next, or from one field to another, or you want to erase an entry in a field, you need to know how your software represents 3270 keys like Newline, Tab, and Erase EOF (end of field).
Depending upon the 3270 software you are running, you may see variations in the keys used in the default setup, and in your ability to reset, or re-map those keys. This is especially true of dial-up software. Addressing all variations in 3270 emulation software and keyboard mapping is beyond the scope of this document. Instead, this is intended to provide support and explanation for the common usage seen with on-campus PC-compatible and Macintosh computers. Contact Computing Services Help Desk at campus extension 5-2905 with any questions or problems not addressed here. Please be prepared to tell the technician:
The following list shows mainframe 3270 keys. In order to process these keys using your desktop computer, you need to know how your tn3270 software emulates these keystrokes. For that information, please refer to "Common PC-compatible keyboard mapping" for PCs or "Common Macintosh keyboard mapping" for Macintosh computers.
| 3270 Key | Purpose |
| Enter | Submit on-screen entries to mainframe for processing. 1 |
| Insert | Toggles between typeover and text insertion. |
| Home | Moves cursor to first input field on the screen (the Command field in BASIS). |
| Tab | Moves the cursor to the first position of the next field on the screen (fields run left to right, top to bottom, and wrap from last field to first field). |
| Back Tab | Moves the cursor to the first position of the previous field on the screen. |
| Clear | Clears (resets) current screen display. This is used in other mainframe applications, such as CMS, but is trapped and will result in an error in BASIS. Instead, PF5 is used to reset a screen. |
| Erase EOF | Erase to End Of Field. This key deletes any characters from the current cursor position to the end of the current field. It is especially handy for deleting lengthy or unwanted text entries, instead of spacing over each character or holding down the delete key. |
| Newline |
Moves the cursor to the first position of the first
modifiable field which is on a line vertically below
the current cursor position. In the example below, we
would move from the field One to the field
Five with a single keystroke, whereas Tab would
require four (4) keystrokes.
One : _____ Two: _____ Three: _____ Four : _____ Five: _____ Six: _____ Seven: _____ Eight: _____ Note: The usage noted below for all PF keys is for BASIS. Other mainframe applications are likely to utilize the PF keys in different manners. |
| PF1 | Help |
| PF2 | Suspend (See Help Topic "Using the Suspend Feature" for more information.) |
| PF3 | Quit |
| PF4 | DeCode |
| PF5 | Restart |
| PF6 | Can vary by application. Often used to access Detail or Percentage windows. |
| PF7 | Back/Previous/PageUp |
| PF8 | Next/Forward/PageDown |
| PF9 | Can vary by application. Often used to access Display or Detail facilities. |
| PF10 | Save |
| PF11 | Options/Comments or other special function |
| PF12 | Flip (change PF key display to show PF13-24) or Print, or other special function. |
| PF13-24 | As assigned for special functions. Usually only available when PF12 is labeled as "Flip." 2 |
| PA1 | Access the COM-PASS Natural session manager, which allows you to simultaneously run up to nine BASIS applications (or other Natural applications which run under Adabas TPF). |
| PA2 | Prints the current screen at Computing Services. Since the printout is not identified with a user and will be recycled, please do not use this key. |
| PA3 | Switch to the next COM-PASS session (first setup under the Natural session manager accessed via PA1). |
Again, depending upon your software, the default mapping (or mapping customized by a previous user) may be different. These are common settings seen on many of the configurations around campus. If for some reason they do not work for you, check to see if your software has re-mapping capabilities, and/or contact Computing Services for assistance.
| 3270 Key | PC-Compatible Key |
| Enter | Enter |
| Insert | Insert |
| Home | Home |
| Tab | Tab |
| Back Tab | Shift + Tab |
| Clear | + (plus) on numeric keypad |
| Erase EOF | - (minus) on numeric keypad |
| Newline | End |
| PF1 - PF12 | F1 - F12 |
| PF13 - PF24 | (Shift + F1) - (Shift + F12) |
| 3270 Key | Macintosh Key(s) |
| Enter | return |
| Insert | apple + i |
| Home | home |
| Tab | tab |
| Back Tab | shift + tab |
| Clear | clear (num lock) |
| Erase EOF | apple + e |
| Newline | shift + return |
| PF1 - PF12 | F1 - F12 |
| PF13 - PF24 | (shift + F1) - (shift + F12) |
Click on the following link for informatin regarding maintaining your User Profile.
Footnotes: