Multiple Systems Coupling hardware requirements

When the physical link is channel-to-channel (CTC) and is dedicated to IMS, Multiple Systems Coupling (MSC) requires the System/370 CTC adapter or a logical channel on the IBM® 3088, ESCON, or Fiber Channel connection (FICON®). MSC FICON CTC support requires that at least one IMS system be installed on an IBM zSeries machine with the FICON channel and FICON CTC microcode. The other side (IMS) can be any processor with a FICON channel.