Abstract:
The purposes of this thesis are to develop a user interface program on a microcomputer with 80x86 family chip to emulate the 3278 computer terminal, to reduce the burden of the mainfame, and to ease and facilitate the use of terminals for users who are less familiar with mainframes. The user interface program for the microcomputer 3278 terminal emulator was developed by using C language. The program displays windows with menus and helps which can be created, and modified. The program consists of a main program, a display related program, a keyboard related program, a window/menu related program, and an IRMA interface program. With these programs, mainframe users can use unfamiliar commands by selecting from menus. Furthermore, users can use the microcomputer in 2 modes, a microcomputer mode and a mainframe mode. While using program in the microcomputer mode, if there is a message from mainframe, there will be a signal to alert the user. Then, the user can switch to work in mainframe mode by pressing a function key. The advantages of this thesis are the improvement of user interface efficiency between microcomputer and mainframe, and reducing errors when user issues a command to the mainframe, and thus, reducing workload of command checking at the mainframe.