Q:
Topic thread:
Printer Systems (PRINT)
PSF/AIX
PRINT XPSF6000
One of my customers has channel attached printers (S/370 Channel
Emulator/A card) with PSF/2. Now he wants to migrate to PSF for AIX 2.1.
First he has to buy a RS/6000 with microchannel. (They are available,
I hope.) Then which AIX does he need to install with PSF/AIX V2.1.0?
I saw in the LPS (G544-3815-02) that PSF for AIX 2.1.0 doesn't support
channel attached printers under AIX 4.1.0.
Does AIX 4.3 support channel attached prts with PSF for AIX V2.1.0?
or some other release?
Second question:
Customer wants output (ASCII) from SAP R3 on a Windows NT printed on
PSF for AIX. With the SAP2AFP a transform is done.
Q: Is it possible to do some conditional processing on that ascii file
to insert some special characters for postprocessing machines?
A:
| As of 2/99, there are very few microchannel RS/6000s still marketed.
| Neither PSF/AIX nor Infoprint Manager support an ISA channel card.
| The product managers and developers are studying the options for
| future attachment of channel printers.
The LPS for PSF/AIX V2.1.0 is way out of date. The answer to your
first question is in libraried item RTA000147943 which I found searching
on PSF/AIX and 4.3 as keywords. The answer is yes, PSF/AIX will run
on AIX 4.3 with the S/370 Channel Emulator/A (f/c 2759 for microchannel
RS/6000s). Current PTFs on PSF/AIX are required for that support.
Without those PTFs, PSF/AIX will not run on any level of AIX V4 (you'll
get core dumps and errors when you try to print or manage printers).
Yes, there are microchannel RS/6000s still sold. The best information
is in the RS/6000 Facts and Figures brochure, G320-9878. It's available
in PDF format from either the MKTTOOLS disk or from the RS/6000 web
site, http://www.rs6000.ibm.com/hardware/downloads/g3209878.pdf.
The current (4/98) RS/6000s that offer microchannel slots include the
7012-397, 7013-595, 7013-J50, 7015-R50, and SP systems (9076). Be
aware that the S/370 Channel Emulator/A adapter is only supported in
microchannel bus0 in the event that you order a system with two MC
buses.
Regarding your second question, I would need more specific detail:
what kind of printer, what post-processing device, and what special
characters? Is the SAP data from ABAP or SAPscript (OTF)? Any
additional information you can provide would be most helpful in
answering your question.
Q:
The SAP data is ASCII ABAP listing met special characters (ASCII codes)
in the margin for postprocessing (kern and Bowe).
The method the customer uses now is as follows:
SAP R3 translates the ABAP listing into PostScript then to a spoolfile
on Windows NT. Then that spool file is downloaded (by hand) to a PC
where an own written program changes in the PostScript file the
special characters with the required dashes for KERN and BOWE.
So a lot of processing.
My understanding of SAP2AFP is as follows:
Via access method 'Z' SAP2AFP transforms the ASCII ABAP data into
EBCDIC line data. Then a pagedef with condional processing should
replace the special characters in the margin with the necessary dashes
required for KERN or BOWE machines.
Is it possible to process the ASCII ABAP listing with page and formdef
with conditional processing?
Thanks.
A:
You understand the processing of ABAP with Access Method Z correctly --
that the sap2afp transform converts the spoolfile (that's been
processed by the IBMAFP or IBMAFP3 driver) to EBCDIC line data using
the values in defcp.tab, then invokes a shell script (usually AIXLD),
which issues an enq command with datatype=line to invoke ACIF with a
pagedef and formdef (according to the entries in the pagedef.tab) and
print.
I think what you want to do is technically feasible, but whether it's
practical or not is a different story. You'd have to code the condition
to check for the characters in the EBCDIC line data (after the
ASCII-to-EBCDIC conversion), and that will be the trickiest part.
It's not just a simple ASCII-to-EBCDIC transform; the spoolfile is also
converted by sap2afp from spoolfile format to line data so it's not
a one-for-one byte conversion. Determining the right values to
specify for the PRINTLINE and the CONDITION START and LENGTH commands
could be quite tricky.
You'd need to capture the output of the sap2afp transform after the
conversion but before the ACIF transform in order to have a file for
research and testing of your conditional pagedef. Here's what I did
to capture a file.
1) I updated printer.tab to add a new destination called TEST:
Dest=TEST System=TST Queue=psftest Node=0.0.0.0
2) I copied AIXLD to TSTLD (where TST is the value from System= in
Step 1 above. I then changed both lines 22 and 24 to read:
cat $3 > /test/abapdata.out
3) I captured the spoolfile from the SAP R/3 directory (usually a name
like /usr/sap/DEV/DVEBMGS00/SP11041B) and copied it to
/test/abapdata.in on my AIX system.
4) On the AIX system, I issued the following command:
cat /test/abapdata.in | sap2afp -d TEST -i
The result was the converted EBCDIC line data file called
/test/abapdata.out.
A binary editor will come in handy -- something like editbin which
is in the EDITBIN PACKAGE on AIXTOOLB. It allows you to display a
file with hex values on the left and either the ASCII or EBCDIC
representations on the right.
I'd also suggest using sap2afp to convert, acif and print a copy of the
spoolfile, so you know what the final output will look like. This will
help you determine the format of the records.
In sum, I think this would be a challenging task, but purely from a
technical standpoint, I believe it can be done.
I hope that helps.
S e a r c h - k e y w o r d s:
psf/6000 psf/aix psf aix 2759 channel emulator microchannel adapter
4.1 4.2 4.3 4.2.1 SAP R/3 sap2afp ABAP OTF SAPscript defcp.tab ascii
ebcdic conditional access method z
WWQA: ITEM: RTA000149363 ITEM: RTA000149363
Dated: 02/1999 Category: XPSF6000
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