Nexus Terminal

Nexus Terminal is a Telnet (SSL/TLS/SSH) terminal emulator (3270/5250/VT/ANSI) that comes with support for printer emulator and FTP client (FTPS/SFTP), script functions, recording capabilities, hotspots, and keyboard configuration options.

The program doesn’t make a good impression in the visual department as the layout may look a bit crowded at a first glance. However, this is only because it integrates a terminal and printer emulator as well as FTP client into a single layout.

Nexus Terminal reveals data (server and user information) in the middle of the screen using the default system font and trying to display the largest size.

It integrates handy features for helping you switch between sessions, close all sessions, print data, enable the Nexus Printer, cut, copy or paste the information, and switch on or off the word wrap mode (available for both the 3270 and 5250 emulation processes).

The application lets you choose a color for the 3270/5250 and VT/ANI emulation, activate the hotspot feature for sending attention keys or starting a script, make the cursor blink, add the assigned process ID to the status line, work with several EBCDIC translation tables, and configure a Telnet 5250 session according to the TN5250E draft from IETF (The Internet Engineering Task Force).

What’s more, you can set several file transfer options, such as enter the local and remote filenames, enable or disable ASCII/CRLF translation on transfer, and set logical record length, tweak two keyboard setup options (one for 3270/5250 and another for VT/ANSI), make your mouse buttons activate several functions, and select the SSL/TLS version or SSH needed for the secure connection.

When it comes to session setup, you are given the freedom to add a name, choose the communication interface, namely TCP/IP or Serial (RS232), set connection type (Telnet, SSH or SSL/TLS), enter the host name and port number, choose between 3270, 5250 or VT/ANSI terminal emulation, tweak the terminal mode and model/size, as well as automatically reconnect in case the session gets disconnected.

What’s more, you can generate private and public SSH key files (RSA/DSA) based on a certain number of bits and run script files. The printer supports Tn3287 (LU type 1 and 3), Tn5250 (model 3812) host print emulation and the Line Printer Daemon print protocol, as well as SSL connections.

In conclusion, Nexus Terminal comes bundled with a powerful set of features but the layout is not intuitive so you may spend some time trying to configure the dedicated parameters. In case you get lost tweaking its features, you may check out the help manual for more details about the utility’s capabilities.