ID:AS IBM AS/400 Terminal Emulation Setup Desqview Technical Note # By Dan Sallitt The IBM AS/400 is a terminal emulation setup akin to the 5250. It usually requires two or three files in config.sys and two loaded from the command line to get it going, followed by a number of other files to implementvarious functions. The sizes of the basic AS/400 files that are listed below are accurate for the early 1990 versions of IBM's AS/400 software. Some of these files are smaller in later releases. Drivers ------- EIMPCS.SYS 1K ECYDDX.SYS 21K - a block device, which means that Quarterdeck's DEVICE.COM cannot load it from the command line FSDD.SYS 59K - only needed to create virtual drives on the AS/400. ECYDDX.SYS must be loaded before it. Later versions of the AS/400 software may replace FSDD.SYS with the TSR STARTFLR. TSR's ----- E5250AH.COM 8.2K - manages the PC's terminal emulation hardware. Different cards can be used for AS/400 connection, and each requires a different TSR to manage it - this file manages the 5250 card. A TSR that is often used instead of E5250AH.COM is called WSEAH.COM. STARTRTR.COM 56K 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 and other memory managers may not see this RAM. In addition to excluding this area on your memory manager, you should probably use the RAM parameter with QEMM (or, if you are on an 8088 or 80286 machine and using a memory manager that provides mappable pages between 640K and 1024K other than the page frame, use Quarterdeck's QRAM to map these pages). Otherwise, E5250AH.COM may access various sections of the reserved memory area when it loads, and DESQview's XDV may crash on startup if all these areas aren't excluded. Loading Quarterdeck's Manifest after you load E5250AH.COM, and examining the QEMM-386/Analysis screen, is a good way of finding out what areas to exclude. The Analysis screen may advise you to exclude some areas inside the expanded memory page frame as well as mappable areas outside the page frame; it should be necessary, however, only to exclude areas outside the page frame. 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. For example - if you are using QEMM-386 and IBM's 5250 card and have determined that the card uses the CC00-CDFF area, your QEMM line in the CONFIG.SYS file should look like this: DEVICE=C:\QEMM\QEMM386.SYS RAM X=CC00-CDFF ...and you should load E5250AH.COM with the following parameter: E5250AH /MC You should then examine QEMM/Analysis screen, and put further exclusions on QEMM if any areas on this screen (other than the page frame area) are labeled "Exclude." 2) In earlier versions of IBM and Quarterdeck's software, STARTRTR did not like to load inside DV, which meant that everything before it couldn't load in DV. Even at that time, many other AS/400 functions loaded after STARTRTR would load in a window - we have seen STF.COM load and run in a DV window. We have verified that the version of STARTRTR dated 5-26-90 can run unsuccessfully inside a DESQview 2.31 window. We are not sure whether revisions of STARTRTR or of DESQview were responsible for resolving early conflicts. On one system that we saw, STARTRTR used an interrupt that can cause conflict with DESQview (INT 69). Because it is likely that DESQview will always avoid using this range of interrupts when the AS/400 drivers are loaded in the CONFIG.SYS file, this is probably not a problem for current DESQview users. However, users of DV 2.30 and later can do themselves no harm by giving DESQview the startup parameter /XB:68 when they run STARTRTR inside DV. 3) On some systems, after 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 in earlier versions of the IBM and Quarterdeck software it couldn't from inside a DV window. We believe that this is no longer a problem with DESQview 2.31 and the mid-1990 release of the AS/400 software. 4) STARTRTR will need 160K of space to load high, even though it only uses 56K or so after it has loaded. 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 run the AS/400 software inside DV, it may or may not be necessary to set Keyboard Conflict to 8. One user thought he needed it set to 9, though this report is not substantiated. 7) In some versions of the IBM AS/400 software, the driver FSSD.SYS and the non-resident FSPC.COM are united in a smaller TSR STARTFLR.COM. Early versions of STARTFLR crashed in a DESQview 2.26 window in much the same preemptive way that early versions of STARTRTR did; we have reason to believe that, even on systems in which STARTRTR runs successfully in DESQview, STARTFLR may fail in a DESQview window when QEMM-386 is present and in an ON state. This information is not yet confirmed. 8) When loaded high with QEMM 5.00, ECYDDX.SYS would fail with an error message like "Keyword invalid." QEMM 5.11 is able to load ECYDDX.SYS high successfully. It is possible that including a single space after the word ECYDDX.SYS on the appropriate line in the CONFIG.SYS file may help QEMM 5.00 load ECYDDX high, but this has not been tested. 9) The AS/400 utility STF has difficulty loading high with both QEMM 5.00 and QEMM 5.11. QEMM's LOADHI /GS feature reports that a version of STF from mid-1990 needs a region of approximately 26K to load successfully; however, on at least one system, this version of STF.COM reports that it has insufficient memory to load even when loaded into a 79K region of High RAM. It is possible that STF.COM is making the assumption that it will be loaded below 640K, and is becoming confused when loaded above 640K; it is also possible that LOADHI /GS is somehow not detecting the correct amount of memory that STF.COM needs to start up. We have not investigated this further at the time of writing. Copyright (C) 1991 by Quarterdeck Office Systems * * * E N D O F F I L E * * *