> Wonderful, thought I, so I did.  I found that after a few lines of
> text and general interaction with the machine.  It had the bad habit
> of stopping its interaction with the serial prot.  It would still
> report me as logged in, but it would acknowledge nor send any
> characters.

Hmm, actually I've seen the same behavior on my IIsi's modem port as
the serial console.  It would just stop sending characters as if they
were stuck in somewhere, and they would flood I typed something.
Sometimes it just gets stuck and all I can do is the Three Finger
Salute.

> I've used this laptop as a console for old sun4's quite a bit, so I
> doubt itsw the software on that end.

I doubt it, too.  I used my SE/30's (running NetBSD, too) printer port
and kermit to access the IIsi.

Hmm...

ken