Making PC5250 Look like a Dumb Terminal

Sure, this functionality is part of PC5250’s Windows Setup function. Windows Setup is a series of check boxes and radio buttons that allow you to manipulate certain features of PC5250’s Windows interface. In this case, you want to eliminate the look–but not the functionality–of the Windows panel interface. Here’s how to do it in the PC5250 version that comes with Client Access Express for Windows V5R1 (note: this functionality is also available in earlier versions of Express client and it may even be available in Client Access for Windows 95/NT V3R2M0, although the Windows Setup option used to activate this feature may not be found in the same Windows menu bar location).

Inside PC5250, select Edit > Preferences > Appearance > Windows Setup from the menu bar. This brings you to the Windows Setup dialogue, which contains settings that deal with PC5250 scroll bars, whether or not to display the PC5250 status bar at the bottom of the screen, check boxes to change how to display your PC5250 Windows title, and an area called Maximized Style, which is where you’ll find the radio button you’re looking for.
Inside the Maximized Style area, there are two mutually exclusive radio buttons: With Title-Bar and Without Title-Bar. By default, PC5250 is set up to activate the With Title-Bar radio button. This tells PC5250 to automatically frame your fully maximized 5250 session with a standard Windows panel containing a Windows title, the PC5250 Windows menu bar, and the PC5250 toolbar. To eliminate the Windows panel from a maximized session, click the Without Title-Bar radio button, and then click on the OK button.

At this point, you’ll see your PC5250 Windows framing panel disappear, and the 5250 screen will redisplay, maximized to fill the entire screen as if it were a green-screen display on a dumb terminal (full 80×24 display). It’s important to note that this is the same PC5250 Windows program that you were running before; it just looks like a dumb terminal now because it no longer displays the Windows panel in maximized mode.

But the panel is still present, which is a good thing. You need it to access the same PC5250 menu bar options that were present when you previously displayed the Windows panel–especially the option to save this change to your configuration file. To get to the PC5250 menu bar options when the screen is in maximized mode, press the ALT-E keystroke combination and select the Restore option from the pop-up menu that appears. This will restore your screen to a non-maximized version of PC5250 (the Windows panel interface only disappears when your PC5250 screen is maximized), complete with all of the usual PC5250 Windows panel options. Select the menu bar option that you want to run (File-Save to save your new settings for example), and you can still access the Windows-based features of PC5250.

Once you’re finished making your changes, click on the Maximize button in the upper right-hand corner of your Windows-enabled PC5250 screen. This will maximize your PC5250 session to fill the entire screen and–once again–remove the Windows panel framework items from your PC5250 display. Then–every time your users open their PC5250 sessions–tell them to maximize their displays and this will make their PC5250 screens look like dumb terminals without the Windows panel interface.

— Joe

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