Robo-FTP User's Guide > Appendix > IBM Host Features

Many sites hosted on IBM mainframes are able to transfer files in ASCII mode but some only use the EBCDIC character set. When IBM Host Features mode is enabled, Robo-FTP supports the translation of ASCII to EBCDIC in files sent to the remote site, and conversely from EBCDIC to ASCII in files received from the remote site.

If using the /type=ascii option with the SENDFILE, RCVFILE, or SYNC script commands produces unsatisfactory results when connected to a site hosted on an IBM server, you should try the /type=ebcdic option. If you create a Managed Site record for this server in the Configurator you can save the type that works best under Default Transfer Mode.

Robo-FTP has built-in translation tables that have been proven with time to be correct in most situations. However, there may be times when one or more character translations may not be correct for a given application.

The Robo-FTP package includes a utility program named NewXlat that may used to create alternate translation table(s). This utility uses a file named "xlat.tbl" (which contains an image of Robo-FTP’s default tables) as input and creates a new file. This file may then read using the READXTBL script command to override Robo-FTP’s built-in translation tables.