EBCDIC to ASCII Converter

How to use

1. 1Choose a direction: EBCDIC to text to decode bytes, or Text to EBCDIC to encode text.
2. 2Pick the code page that matches your source: CP037 for US data, CP500 for International, or CP1140 for US data with the euro sign.
3. 3Set the byte format to hex or decimal, then paste your EBCDIC bytes or type the text to convert.
4. 4Read the output: decoded text shows control bytes as dots, and encoded output lists any character that has no byte in the chosen code page.
5. 5Check the byte by byte table to see each byte lined up with its character and Unicode code point.
6. 6Use the copy button to copy the decoded text or the EBCDIC bytes, and Clear to start over.

About this tool

EBCDIC to ASCII Converter translates between EBCDIC, the 8-bit character encoding IBM mainframes and midrange systems have used since the System/360, and the ASCII or Unicode text that everything else reads. The two encodings are not compatible: the byte values for letters, digits, and punctuation are completely different, and the letters are not even contiguous (A to I, then a gap, then J to R, then a gap, then S to Z), a layout left over from punch-card column encoding. So a data set pulled off a z/OS, z/VM, or IBM i (AS400) host in binary, or a hex dump from a COBOL file, is unreadable until each byte is translated through the right code page. There is no single EBCDIC, so this tool implements the three variants that come up most. CP037 is EBCDIC US/Canada, the classic default for US English data. CP500 is EBCDIC International (Latin-1): the same letters and digits as CP037, but the brackets and a few symbols sit on different bytes. CP1140 is CP037 with the euro sign on byte 0x9F, for newer US data that carries the euro. The byte to Unicode tables are transcribed from the Unicode Consortium mapping files, so a decode matches what a mainframe would produce. It works in both directions. EBCDIC to text takes a string of bytes, as hex (the usual case, since you paste a hex dump) or as space separated decimal values, and decodes each byte to its character, rendering control codes as dots the way a hex viewer does. Text to EBCDIC takes plain ASCII or Unicode text and produces the EBCDIC bytes as hex or decimal, and any character with no representation in the chosen code page is reported rather than silently dropped, so you know exactly what could not be encoded. Hex input is forgiving: spaces, line breaks, and 0x prefixes are stripped automatically, and an odd number of hex digits is flagged with the exact count instead of being guessed at. Every result comes with a byte by byte table that lines up the EBCDIC hex, the EBCDIC decimal, the character, and the Unicode code point, which makes it easy to spot the one byte in a record that came across in the wrong code page. A reference panel shows the core letter and digit values and explains why the EBCDIC alphabet is split into three runs. One honest limit: this converts the single-byte EBCDIC code pages listed here, character by character. It does not handle packed-decimal (COMP-3) fields, zoned-decimal sign nibbles, double-byte (DBCS) Asian code pages, or COBOL copybook record layouts; it reads and writes the byte stream. Everything runs locally in your browser with plain lookup tables, so the bytes you paste or the text you encode are never uploaded, logged, or sent anywhere.

Free to use. Works in your browser. No signup, no login.