PA@BRL.ARPA> (10/04/85)
We have a network of Sun workstations. They each have the capability to use 6 serial ports. Two of the ports, labeled /dev/ttya and b, work fine. The other 4, labeled /dev/ttys0 through 3, have problems. Quite often when we use them (as terminal lines), some of the characters we type in get echoed 10 or 15 times. This is quite annoying when in vi or mail. Until now we have been able to get around that by using only the first two ports. But we are expanding such that we need to use more. When the ports are acting particularly flaky, we get the message "zs5: silo overflow" on the console (or some other number for the zs board). Has anyone else experienced this problem, and does anyone have any suggestions whatsoever? I'd appreciate hearing about them. We are running 4.2BSD. Steven Christensen International TechneGroup, Inc. ...decvax!utah-cs!utah-gr!admin!iti!svc / seismo /
gxm@raybed2.UUCP (GERARD MAYER) (10/08/85)
Your question envokes many memories. Over a year ago I went through this on
my SUN 2/120. I would frequently get the "zs5: silo overflow" while I was
interfacing to robot/machine vision controllers that looked worse than your
terminals. First make sure xon/xoff control is set properly on your terminal,
and then if you have a 120 sitting on the floor, put it on it's castors. The
board that the ttys{0,1,2,3} are on is more sensitive to heat, and the fan
gets better air flow. This did it for me.
Gerard Mayer
Raytheon Research Division
uucp ..linus!raybed2!gxm