t68@nikhefh.nikhef.nl (Jos Vermaseren) (04/02/91)
I ran across a nasty little problem when hooking up my atari ST as a terminal to my NeXTstation. I followed the instructions for the cables and installed the magic line in the file /etc/ttys and everything worked really well. The line is: ttya "usr/etc/getty std.19200" vt100 on secure The problems came the next day. I turned on the NeXTstation for some hefty debugging and left the Atari off. When running a program I noticed how slow it went. It got only about 50-60% of the CPU. with a ps -agx the culprit was shown to be getty which had used already 55 minutes (the kernel had 60 minutes idle time and I had been using probably about 20 min. for the rest). When I turned on the Atari the increment in time for getty stopped. One theory is that there is a going up and down of login messages being interpreted as usernames and passwords. The question is: How do I stop this without pulling the cable between the computers and without being forced to turn on the atari when I don't need it? Thanks in advance Jos Vermaseren
akcs.dgy@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Donald Yuniskis) (04/08/91)
Drive the modem control lines (DSR, DTR, etc.) to a solid level.
Problem is most probably the getty seeing a signal bouncing up
and down ("floating") and alternately seeing it as asserted -- time
to post a "login:" prompt -- and then released -- oops... he disconnected.
First make _sure_ these lines required by the system are actually being
driven _even when the Atari is ON!_. You could have an input on the NeXT
connected to an input on the Atari. Assuming this is OK, and you don't
want to leave the Atari on, try placing a resistive load between the signal
in question and GND (3K should be OK for the Atari to "overdrive" when it
has to). You could also get nasty and disable the signal by tying it to
another signal available from the NeXT. Sorry can't help any further -- I
don't own a NeXT to be able to dig much deeper.