My company uses AREV as its programming language

for its point of sale (POS) system. Our main

transaction screen is a collector window, tied to

our customer table. Occasionally, some of our

stores call our Help Desk with the following problem:

They scan an item to be sold to a customer. After

SKU validation, the system displays the title of

the item, plus the cost of the item. On occassion,

the price of the item will just start flashing.

The keyboard still works: caps lock, num lock, and

pause keys are functional. However, AREV itself is

locked. It will not accept input from the keyboard.

The only way around this is to reset the workstation,

and process the transaction again.

I was wondering if anyone else has ever heard of or

seen this problem before, and if they had any ideas

as how to prevent it from happening.

Thanks for your input,

Matt

Matt,

How are you performing the scan, through a keyboard wedge or through a serial port? My first guess would be contention between the TSR software and AREV (if in fact that's how you are doing it). Otherwise I'd need more information to hazard a guess.

dbakke@srpcs.com

SRP Computer Solutions

Don,

We do all of our scanning with keyboard wedge scanners.

There are no TSR's involved. Any programming of

the scanners for 10 or 12 digit scanning occurs

using the scanners programming book and its own

internal 'memory'.

Now, if it helps, when an sku is scanned there are

about four (4) different function calls that are made

to check on various inventory issues concerning each

SKU. Could that have an affect?

Thanks for your answer,

Matt

Matt,

Now, if it helps, when an sku is scanned there are about four (4) different function calls that are made to check on various inventory issues concerning each SKU. Could that have an affect?

A lot depends on whether this problems can and does exist on all of your installation sites or whether particular sites encounter this problem. Without "digging in" to the actual system my first order of business would be to try and see if this problem can be duplicated predictably. If so, then it's a simple (or not so simple) matter of tracing the code. The particular problem you are having can conceivably be caused by called functions - especially if these functions invoke any of the WINDOW_COMMON% variables for manipulating the contents of your collector windows.

dbakke@srpcs.com

SRP Computer Solutions

It could be that a loop in your collector window validation code is causing the problem - perhaps the SKU codes intermittently fail validation when particular scanners are used (digits not recognised) and that throws the system into some untested code? Have you checked that the validation code is sound?

First guesses off the top of my head are

a) something is trashing @DICT like a perform 'LIST …'

b) you have a PRINTER ON but no PRINTER OFF

apk@sprezzatura.com

Sprezzatura Ltd

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