EBCDIC/ASCII Mapping for Network RJE

A. INTRODUCTION Under NETRJS [1], CCN's Network rje protocol [2], a virtual remote batch terminal may be either EBCDIC or ASCII. CCN operates an IBM 360/91 which performs all of its normal processing in EBCDIC. When a virtual ASCII terminal signs onto NETRJS, CCN translates the "card reader" stream to EBCDIC and translates the "printer" stream back to ASCII [3]. In recent months, a number of ASCII hosts (RAND PDP-10, Utah PDP-10, Illinois PDP-11) have completed user processes for NETRJS. Several users at these sites have noted deficiencies in the ASCII/EBCDIC mapping rules originally implemented in NETRJS. Since their objections were well founded, we have altered the existing mapping and added a new one. This RFC has three purposes: (1) to make all users of NETRJS aware of the changed ASCII mapping (2) to call this problem to the attention of the Network RJE Protocol Committee (3) to knowledge and support Joel Winett's pioneering work [4] in this area. A year ago, Joel Winett Published RFC #183, containing the results of his careful research into just what EBCDIC really means. He sounded a clarion call for all EBCDIC sites to join in defining a Network standards mapping. At this time, we at CCN were primarily absorbed in the timely implementation of the NETRJS protocol to serve an EBCDIC (!) user site, RAND, so we were not very supportive of his efforts. RFC #183 is a valuable document; we hope a copy falls into the hands of Armonk. It is clear from RFC #183 that EBCDIC consists of a standard ("basic") set of characters, combined with a number of overlapping ad-hoc character happenings. Fortunately, if we exclude Braden [Page 1]