greid@adobe.com (Glenn Reid) (09/27/89)
Hi. I was the one that posted a question about using a
Telebit TrailBlazer Plus with the NeXT cube and UUCP.
The specific problem was how to make the modem not say
"NO CARRIER" when you tell it "ATH", which UUCP always
does.
Thanks to the many of you who sent me mail; I haven't
had time to respond individually to you, but all of your
comments were extremely helpful!
The short answer is that Telebit acknowledged this as
a bug in their 5.00 roms, and is going to send me updated
firmware shortly. That's good to know.
The longer answer is that it's easy enough to get it working
if you use a direct-connect instead of an ACU connection
with UUCP.
I have also managed to get the modem to behave on either
serial line, for both dial-in and dial-out, by correctly
setting the modem's negotiation of DTR/DSR/CTS. Basically,
if you start up a getty process on the NeXT for either of
the serial ports, they will activate a login process
whenever the hardware hooked up to the serial line raises
the CTS (clear to send) signal on the serial port. As
a default, some modems do this, some do not. The TrailBlazer
comes shipped from the factory with CTS always on, but there
is a register that lets you turn on CTS only after making
a successful connection with the remote modem, which is
exactly what you want. You also have to set the modem up
to respond to DTR/DSR handshaking, or it won't work. If
anybody wants more details, I can supply them to you.
The upshot is that I now have two modems, one at 2400 baud and
one at 19200 baud(!), connected to the two serial ports on my
NeXT cube, both of which can either receive calls (dial-in) or
dial out at will. And it all works just great. Now all I need
is some more phone lines :-)
I have also become somewhat of an "expert" on setting up
UUCP connections on the cube, if anybody needs any help.
Glenn Reid
{sun,decwrl}!adobe!heaven!glenn