[bluedino]

>> a real 5250 terminal weighed close to 85 pounds

I came into networking around the time when those were being replaced by 5250 terminal emulation in Windows through an application. So much desk space was freed up, now that you only had to have one 'computer' each desk.

Some customers would run new CAT5, and the others would just slap ethernet adapters on their twinax. Still run into a huge bundle of that stuff in a ceiling from time to time.

[kjs3]

That brings back memories (not good ones). Those twinax baluns (and the equally evil token ring type 1 to ethernet baluns) were awful to keep running. I guess in the short run it was less expensive than running new cable, but in the long run my feeling is the TCO probably wasn't worth waiting to bite the bullet.