In a message dated 7/9/98 11:35:34 AM GMT,  [log in to unmask] writes:

<< My boss has asked me if I can do something simple as a System Task. We have
a
 problem with our T1 supplier Cable & Phoneless^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^hWireless.
 Their links keep dropping & we need to periodically PING the remote Routers
at
 each plant to see if the connection is up. He wants me to write a simple task
 that
 will wake up once every 2 minutes and PING each plant, reporting to the
Console
 and to each MANAGER logged on. I would like to programmatically call
 PING.ARPA.SYS from a System Routine. He wants a system routine so we don't
 have to add another background job (We already have 6). I know it can be done
 because Beechglen has a job which starts it's own System Task. The job ends
off
 but the task keeps going. To stop the task, you delete a file in PUB.SYS that
 the
 task creates as it launches.
    I think I remember in the old classic Intrinsics manual that you could
call
 CREATEPROCESS with a parm that would cause the task to be spawned off
 independent of the parent task. >>

Have you got MPEX from Vesoft, they supply a BACKG job, which allows multiple
processes, running under the one background job. We have about 15 seperate
processes, running various programs.

Hope this is helpfull

Andy Popay
ARC Central