The ISPF Primary Option Menu

When three asterisks have appeared to indicate that TSO has established your session, press the Enter key to see the ISPF/PDF Primary Option Menu. Click here to see it.

When that "menu" first appears after the TSO logon, it will be partially obscured by a copyright notice in the lower left quadrant of the screen; if you press the Enter key that notice will disappear. Click here to see the screen without the copyright notice.

This screen looks very much like it did in the 1970s, when the 3270 class of terminal first appeared, and an amazing new tool called SPF, the "Structured Programming Facility", was delivered to programmers who had until then been used only command streams and line editors on terminals acting like teletype machines.

Full-screen tools like those in ISPF and its ancestor SPF were new in the 1970s, when most computers were accessed using "command line interfaces". Full-screen tools are still disdained by some people, especially UNIX fans, but ISPF was a forerunner of the easier-to-use graphical user interfaces that dominate today's desktop computer systems.

You can access any of the displayed ISPF functions by entering its option number at the bottom of the screen next to the "Option ===>" prompt, and pressing the Enter key. On your assignments for this course, the option you will be selecting most of the time is 2 for EDIT, to invoke the ISPF editor.

You don't need to check out the ISPF "full-screen" Editor now, but if you do succumb to the temptation, note that the way to exit is to press F3, ISPF's universal "END" key.

Logging Off TSO

Before you exit your 3270 emulator (e.g. QWS3270 or TCP3270), you must exit ISPF and log off TSO.

Otherwise the system will record your userid as still being connected, and you will be unable to log on until a "time out" period has expired (usually about 30 minutes, but sometimes a lot longer).

You can log off by pressing F3 to exit from the ISPF Primary Option Menu, and then entering the command LOGOFF when the TSO "READY" prompt is displayed.

Your logoff will be confirmed by the message IKJ56470I, quickly replaced by ENTER "L" FOR TSO/E ...

At that point you can terminate the 3270 emulator application (or log on to TSO again).

Click on Next in the above ACTION MENU to do an Assignment to show that you've gotten connected.