mdm@cocktrice.UUCP (Mike Mitchell) (01/26/89)
I got off the phone with one of Microport's support techs about the DTR not dropping properly when a getty exits. The short story is that this is a bug which will get fixed "some day." In talking to the support tech, he stated that those waiting for the V3.2 release for the '386 will not suffer from the bug once they have upgraded. However, those of us with '286 machines and V2.4 have two options. Pay the phone company for another phone line so that it doesn't matter if the modem answers the line, or wait until the next V/AT release (which does not seem to be planned). The support tech assured me that there was someone working on the V/AT product, however. Trying to get an object module which fixes the bug was out of the question. The problem appears to be with the way the serial driver handles the modem control code. Somewhere it is not clearing a flag that states that the device is closed. After the momentary timeout which causes the driver to drop DTR, something else decides that there is a process waiting for an incoming call and the DTR gets reasserted. It looks like those of us with '286 boxes will have to wait for(ever?) a long time before we can get solutions to problems that we may have. The resources at Microport seem to be focused on the '386 world, and they have problems diverting attention to support the products which they already have in the field. It would be nice if the Microport management could assign resources to fix problems which are reported. If the resources do not exist, then it should be easy to justify budgeting to address the resource shortage just from the amount of unhappy people which post to this newsgroup. I would imagine that there are a few people in the world which would be interested in tackling the problems which seem to plague this news group (serial ports included). What is going to happen when Intel releases the 80486? Guess who will get stuck with a capable machine and no support? -- Mike Mitchell BELL: (505) 471-7639 2020 Calle Lorca #43 ARPA: mdm@cocktrice.UUCP Santa Fe, NM 87505 UUCP: ...!uunet!dmk3b1!cocktrice!mdm
learn@igloo.UUCP (william vajk) (01/27/89)
In article <364@cocktrice.UUCP>, mdm@cocktrice.UUCP (Mike Mitchell) writes: > I got off the phone with one of Microport's support techs about the DTR > not dropping properly when a getty exits. The short story is that this is > a bug which will get fixed "some day." They fixed something, and broke another in the proceedure. While 1.3.8 had more severe driver problems, it did handle DTR correctly so far as dropping getty was concerned. > It would be nice if the Microport management could assign resources to fix > problems which are reported. If the resources do not exist, then it should > be easy to justify budgeting to address the resource shortage just from the > amount of unhappy people which post to this newsgroup. I would imagine that > there are a few people in the world which would be interested in tackling > the problems which seem to plague this news group (serial ports included). Microport is doing exactly what any corporation does, maximizing profits. This is being done without any regard to moral obligations to those who bought their products in good faith and based on salesman's promises. I've suffered for over two years now with this particularly brain damaged OS, and will shortly be upgrading to '386. I have some mixed emotions about throwing all my distribution floppies and manuals for VAT into a bonfire, attended by past and present igloo users. Actually, I'll probably offer it for sale at a greatly reduced price, hopeing that there's some masochist out there. Given my honest opinion and honest nature, it will be a difficult sale to make. I won't dignify any offer of an upgrade with a trade in with a moment's thought. And if anyone from microport is reading, take note : YOU WON'T BE SEEING AN ORDER FOR 386 FROM ME. Past performance is the best measure for future expectations. [This space was originally reserved for a statement of contempt for microport, but it proved unpublishable. Something about parasites and how they kill hosts.] Bill Vajk | Eventually SOMEBODY's going to put SOMETHING learn@igloo | I SAY in a .sig. -Allen Gwinn
jim@tiamat.FSC.COM (Jim O'Connor) (01/28/89)
In article <364@cocktrice.UUCP>, mdm@cocktrice.UUCP (Mike Mitchell) writes: > > It looks like those of us with '286 boxes will have to wait for(ever?) a > long time before we can get solutions to problems that we may have. The > resources at Microport seem to be focused on the '386 world, and they have > problems diverting attention to support the products which they already > have in the field. You know, this sounds an awful lot like Altos. Our last OS upgrade (which still had problems) for the 286 machines was 3.4b and it was over 18 months ago (probably more). Since then, Altos has released some 386 machines with versions of Xenix SysV and Unix System V that I've heard really work! It would seem that vendors would like to build customer loyalty by providing these new versions on the older machines also. But what actually seems to be the case is that they try to promote customer loyalty by forcing you to upgrade to new hardware (which we don't need) in order to get newer versions of the OS (which we DO need). --jim ------------- James B. O'Connor jim@FSC.COM Filtration Sciences Corporation 615/821-4022 x. 651