home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- ID:AS Terminal Emulation Setup IBM AS/400
- Desqview Technical Note
- By Dan Sallitt
-
- The IBM AS/400 is a complicated terminal emulation setup, akin to
- the 5250. It usually requires 3 files in config.sys (EIMPCS.SYS
- (1K), ECYDDX.SYS (block device - 21K) and FSDD.SYS (needs ECYDDX
- before it - 59K)) and 2 from the command line (a hardware manager
- - either E5250AH.COM (8.2K) or WSEAH.COM, usually - and
- STARTRTR.COM, which is 56K) to get it going, followed by a number
- of other files to implement various functions.
-
- 1) One of the cards that the AS/400 software can use, the 5250
- card (and maybe others as well), puts a piece of RAM, 8K or so in
- size, at xC00 (usually CC00). QEMM 5.00 and other memory
- managers may not see this RAM. In addition to excluding this
- area on your memory manager, make sure the RAM parameter is on
- QEMM (or that QRAM is present with other memory managers that
- allow mapping of expanded memory pages between 640K and 1024K
- other than the page frame); otherwise, E5250AH.COM accesses vast
- portions of the reserved memory area when it loads, and DV 2.26's
- XDV may crash on startup if all these areas (except for the
- page frame, which the AS/400 software also touches) aren't excluded.
-
- Giving E5250AH.COM the parameter /Mx (where x is the same as above -
- C by default) seems to make it access fewer areas, though the
- areas that are accessed still need to be excluded if you don't
- use the RAM parameter or otherwise map all available areas
- between 640K and 1024K before the AS/400 software loads.
-
- 2) STARTRTR traditionally doesn't like to load inside DV, which
- means that everything before it can't load in DV. It's likely that
- functions loaded after STARTRTR can load in a window - we have
- seen STF.COM load and run in a DV window. On one system that we
- saw, STARTRTR used an interrupt that can conflict with DESQview
- (INT 69), but this isn't the sole cause of its problems inside
- DESQview.
-
- 3) Usually, after the STARTRTR is run, users run a program
- FSPC.COM to make a virtual disk on the mainframe. This program
- isn't resident and takes no memory. However, FSPC needs to see
- FSDD.SYS, and it can't from inside a DV window, so it currently
- can't run inside DV. This will get to be an issue if STARTRTR is
- ever runnable inside DV.
-
- 4) STARTRTR will need 160K of space to load high, even though it
- settles down to 56K or so.
-
- 5) Some AS/400 drivers and TSR's know about expanded memory and
- store something there. Therefore, some of the memory figures that
- I've quoted may increase in the absence of expanded memory.
-
- 6) If you get the AS/400 software running with DV, it may or may
- not be necessary to set Keyboard Conflict to 8. One user thought
- he needed it set to 9, which makes no sense to us.
-
- 7) We're hearing in March 1990 of new versions of the IBM AS/400
- software that have fewer and smaller files. Apparently the driver
- FSSD.SYS and the non-resident FSPC.COM are united in a smaller TSR
- STARTFLR.COM, which, we hear from some users, crashes in a DV
- window in much the same preemptive way that STARTRTR.COM does.
-
- Copyright (C) 1990 by Quarterdeck Office Systems
- * * * E N D O F F I L E * * *