TECHNICAL BULLETIN                                LANAI/XIRCOM PE
LANtastic AI                                             08.05.91
LANtastic AI with XIRCOM Pocket Ethernet adapters     Page 1 of 2

The XIRCOM Pocket Ethernet adapter has been tested in-house and is
compatible with all other LANtastic Network Operating System
software.  This bulletin should replace all other notes generated
from this office to date. 

The following information is based on in-house testing and customer
support of LANtastic AI.  If you are not a registered LANtastic
owner, your questions should be directed to our technical sales
staff at (602) 293-6363.  Any questions or comments on this
bulletin may be forwarded by FAX (602) 293-8065 or mailed to :
Artisoft Inc., 575 East River Road, Tucson, AZ., 85704, ATTN:
LANtastic AI Support.

 RUNNING LANTASTIC AI WITH A XIRCOM POCKET ETHERNET ADAPTER

         The XIRCOM Pocket Ethernet (PE) adapter is a full-fledged
Ethernet adapter that is designed to provide the 10 Mbs cable speed
that is called for in the Ethernet standard. It can be operated on
either LPT1 or LPT2 with LANTASTIC.

         When running INSTALL to chose the type of adapter you
have, not only will it copy over the PE.EXE and AILANBIO.EXE
programs, it will also copy over a file called PE.DOC. PLEASE READ
IT.

         Before attaching the XIRCOM PE adapter to the parallel
port, make sure that the parallel port can be used to print. This
will verify the proper configuration of the parallel port's IRQ and
IOBASE. Since these are considered industry-wide standards,
programs that print to either port will use the standard
parameters: IRQ 7 & IOBASE 378 for the first parallel port (LPT1:)
and IRQ 5 & IOBASE 278 for the second (LPT2:). Quite often, the
computer will have jumpers on the mother board or I/O board to
configure the parallel ports.

         If you still have problems, the standard troubleshooting
approaches should then be followed:              

ù   What is the cabling involved?             
ù   Is the cabling the correct type (RG58 A/U or RG58 C/U), and the 
    same as what is being used in the rest of the network?       
ù   Is it securely connected, and properly terminated?            
ù   Do any other workstations have similar problems with the same 
    server?             
ù   Has the unique selection of IRQ, IOBASE and, if applicable,   
    RAMBASE been verified at the server?             
ù   Using supported version of DOS? (MS-DOS 3.1, 3.3, 4.01 or 5.0) 
ù   Are there any TSRs loaded before the network software?


         This is not intended to be an exhaustive list of the
approaches to be taken.

         If the PE.EXE program declares the parallel port to be
non-bidirectional, you may experience some problems. You might not
be able to login (with the error: "Cannot Locate Network Name"), or
execute a program from the server on the PE node (an error message:
"Error in .EXE" or a lockup might occur), or COPY or XCOPY large
amounts of files to or from the PE node (file corruption or
bleeping lockups could occur). In summary, the problem can show
itself in using any amount of cable traffic. In this case, contact
either XIRCOM or the computer manufacturer to see if the chip set
that supports the parallel port can be swapped out for a fully
bidirectional one. Some computers have a CMOS setup that will allow
you to change the parallel port to be bidirectional.

         Some customers have reported that they will receive better
results if the PE node is not at the end of the network.

         Both of these concerns suggest that this is a hardware
issue. However, the engineers at ARTISOFT have worked out some
software settings that can help some customers. There are two
settings to change:

            1) Run the NET_MGR program at the server, and, under  
               the menu: Server Startup Parameters, set the Network 
               Buffers to 2048 (2K).             
            2) at both the PE node and at all the servers involved 
               with the PE node, edit the AILANBIO command to     
               include the software switch: ACK_TIMEOUT=4. It would 
               look like this (It does not need to be in caps):

                AILANBIO ACK_TIMEOUT=4

         After rebooting every computer involved in the change, try
to replicate the problem.

         If the problems still exist, contact XIRCOM or ARTISOFT to
see what the latest word is on this issue, since both companies are
actively looking into this.

ARTISOFT, Inc. makes no warranty as to the completeness or accuracy
of this document.  LANtastic is a registered trademark of ARTISOFT,
Inc.  Brand names and product names are trademarks or registered
trademarks of their respective companies.