- issued by DOS during keyboard poll loop - indicates DOS may be carefully re-entered by TSR - used by TSR programs to popup and make DOS disk I/O calls - supported by OS/2 compatibility box - default behavior is to simply perform an IRET - any DOS functions above 0Ch may be called while in this handler - INT 21,3F and INT 21,40 may not use a handle that refers to CON while in this handler - see also INDOS