ZCOM Message Handling

Terminal State

Terminal State

Within the ZCOM subsystem, the terminal state may be either enabled or disabled, activated or deactivated. For normal I/O operations, a terminal ZLU must be both enabled and activated. If a terminal is disabled (regardless of whether it is activated), then no messages can be sent to it or received from it.

If a terminal is enabled but deactivated, then messages can be sent to the terminal, but none can be received. The following table illustrates the different combinations.

 

 

Terminal State

SEND

RECV

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Enabled/Activated

Yes

Yes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Enabled/Deactivated

Yes

No

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Disabled/Activated

No

No

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Disabled/Deactivated

No

No

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NOTE

 

A terminal state of disabled overrides the activated/deactivated status.

 

 

 

 

 

For some protocols (such as the NCR 301 protocol), the protocol handler automatically deactivates the terminal when a valid message is received and until it has been processed. Each time a message is received, the terminal must be reactivated by the receiving program, using the zcntl command with the ‘activate’ request code (request code 9, ZCOM_MRQCODE_ACT).

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Chapter 2