[comp.sys.apollo] Problem with serial lines on dn3/4k?

rn@ap.co.umist.ac.uk (bob nutter) (03/06/91)

We're experiencing a problem with the serial lines on our dn3000's and 4000's:
They're connected to our Gandalf PACX and should drop the line on logout,
causing the PACX to disconnect. Sometimes however, you return to the login
prompt again. Once this happens, it stays like that, and can only be cleared
by pressing the reset switch (shut doesn't clear it). This causes messy
behaviour when on a terminal, but interferes with Eudora (a Mac mailer that
communicates via telnet over our serial lines). Has anyone else experienced
this, or can offer a solution? (this is unpatched sr10.1, but the necessity of
the reset switch leads me to think this is related to the driver chip)

bob
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
bob nutter, computer officer    | "If there's no class divide, then how come
UMIST dept of computation       |  you're standing here waiting for a bus
po box 88 manchester m60 1qd uk |  when someone drives past in a car worth
tel:+44 61 200 3386             |  the price of a house?"
email:b.nutter@umist.ac.uk      |             -Class War grafitti

goldfish@CONCOUR.CS.CONCORDIA.CA (03/07/91)

We have a Gandalf PAC-X which had been refusing to talk to our Apollos
for two years.  The problem comes from the fact that the Apollo does
not handshake properly.  I had a crontab driven program which
monitored the status of the serial ports (with tctl) and reset the
ports by "manually" tinkering with the DTR-DCD signals.  Unfortunately
this program was broken when we downgraded to the 10.2 OS.  You should
probably be able to figure out the program from what I have already
said, however the cautionary note is that the "sio" and the "tty"
devices are ignorant of one another and state changes to a tty can
crash a sio application and vice versa.  

My suggestion is to look at another way to connect your serial lines
to the Apollos through a platform that actually DOES support serial
IO.

--	  Paul Goldsmith
<goldfish@concour.cs.concordia.ca>				 (514) 848-3031
	(Shirley Maclaine told me there would be LIFETIMES like this)