Hm, DOS isn't really good in multi-tasking, and Clipper programs, although there can be done some things in the background, isn't _at all_ good in background processing.
If it's for processing some keyboard-wedge for reading barcodes, then get a version that connects between the keyboard and the PC.
If it's for gathering data from a slow-speed or low-traffic device, you can probably process it in the background, I've used NFLIB (NanForum Toolkit) function FT_OnIdle to process stuff in the background, like displaying the system-time and num-lock state in the corner of the screen, but it only gets time when you app isn't too busy, it depends on the Idle-time of the VM system.
If the data just needs to be put in a table (dbf file) for processing by your app, then you could write a TSR that captures tha data from the port, and writes it in the table (turn on shared use of the table). Biggest problem could be that the knowledge and techniques for writing DOS TSR's has nearly vanished, as in Windows you can run many processes next to each other, and they should act like in a networked environment anyway.
If possible, re-deploy on some Windows of maybe Linux environment, re-compiling with Harbour (harbour-project.com, free) or xHarbour (xharbour.org, free or xharbour.com for a paid & supported version). Both compile and run on Windows and several *nixes, up to and including Mac-OS.
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