FILE NAME:          E X T R A . R E F

Original DATE:      June 28, 1995

REVISE   DATE:      August 2, 1999

FROM:               Artic Help Center

                    Artic Technologies
                    1000 John R. Road
                    Suite 108
                    Troy, MI  48083.

                    (248) 588-7370 Extension 11 Sales
                    (248) 588-2650 Fax
                    (248) 588-1425 Help Center

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TO:                 All users of Business Vision

SUBJECT:            AttachMate's Extra 3270 emulation for MS-DOS 
                    With Business Vision 3.xx systems.

 Procedures for Installing and Running AttachMate Extra for DOS
With 
                  Business Vision Version 3.xx
                   By David P. Rosenfeld M.A.

Note: This article was originally prepared in the spring of 1992.

For a number of years, blind people have been using 3270 terminal
emulation packages such as Irma and Avatar to communicate with
IBM mainframe systems, but not all connectivity packages worked
well with speech, and even within a product, not all versions
worked equally well.  There has been an unfortunate tendency for
emulation packages to behave increasingly badly as there
complexity increased, and this has forced blind mainframe users
to choose from a dwindling number of quite obscure products.

It is with considerable excitement, therefore, that some of us
have discovered that AttachMate Extra, one of the most powerful
and popular of the new breed of multi-purpose connectivity
packages can be made to work well with speech, and in particular,
with version 3 of Artic Business Vision.  The major hurdle is to
make the two applications share control of the keyboard, a
potentially daunting task given the tendency of many emulation
packages to insist on grabbing all resources for there own use,
but if you follow these simple steps, you should have no
difficulty.  

Begin by setting up a minimal artic configuration.

Artic's key watchdog should be set off, but word route and 3270
DOS toggle can be on.  Scroll-lock should be set to application,
since Extra requires the use of this key.  When operating
correctly, ctrl-alt space will work properly as an Extra command
to toggle sessions, but ctrl-alt-k (the Extra command to kill the
session from memory) will require double click to pass the
command to the application.  

Assuming that extra has been installed so that it can work
without speech (i.e. files have ben copied into an appropriate
directory, printer drivers unzipped if needed, and Extra's
directory included in the path statement in the AUTOEXEC.BAT
file),   the first step is to run an AttachMate utility called
"FIND_INT" that will indicate which interrupts are currently not
being used.  The utility should be run while Artic is loaded, but
without Extra being loaded.  Choose one of the interrupts listed,
(66 is usually available), and include it in an environment
variable in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file as follows: 

     "set acpint=nn", 

where "nn" is the number of the chosen interrupt.  It should
probably be placed after the path statement but before any other
AttachMate-related commands.  This causes Extra to relinquish
control of keyboard interrupt 21, so that there will not be a
conflict with other currently running software requiring its use.

The next line of the AUTOEXEC.BAT file should run the tsr
executable file "INT16TRP", since the trapping of bios keyboard
interrupt 16 will be crucial to the ability of Artic and Extra to
share control of the keyboard.  This utility enables Artic to
monitor interrupt 16 without needing to take control.

Next, Artic should be loaded.  The AttachMate batch file normally
used to load the software can be invoked after Artic is loaded. 
Make certain that DOS concurrency is set on in AttachMate, or
Artic (and other TSR's) will be locked out.  

The "CONFIG.SYS" file does not need to be modified to run with
Artic, although AttachMate itself may require the use of certain
drivers depending on type of interface card, etc.  Also, if you
have a recent version of DOS or a memory management package, it
is desirable to push as much of DOS and Artic out of conventional
memory as possible.  Extra also has expanded memory support that
may be helpful. 

I have not experimented with AttachMate's snow removal, but
changing its setting may improve the speed of cursor tracking.  

The following is a sample AUTOEXEC.BAT file.

     @ECHO OFF
     PATH C:\;C:\DOS;C:\EXTRA;
     SET ACPINT=66
     INT16TRP
     \ARTIC\VISION\VEST /E
     \ARTIC\VISION\BVISION /M3


Comments from Artic technical Support:

     If your Extra software does not have "INT16TRP" contact
AttachMate to obtain this driver.

     Also, keep in mind that MS-DOS 6 and above has a utility
called "MEMMAKER".  The MEMMAKER program is there to simplify the
process of loading programs high which are used in the
"CONFIG.SYS" and "AUTOEXEC.BAT" files.


     We are appreciative of David P. Rosenfeld sharing his notes
on making AttachMate's Extra 3270 emulation for MS-DOS work with
Artic Technologies Business Vision software.  We welcome and
encourage any such submissions from our customers.