Subject: Re: Peculiar serial behaviour
To: Ken Nakata <kenn@eden.rutgers.edu>
From: The Great Mr. Kurtz <davagatw@mars.utm.edu>
List: port-mac68k
Date: 04/10/1996 18:32:41
On Wed, 10 Apr 1996, Ken Nakata wrote:

> > 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.

3 Questions:

1. When the serial port goes ballistic, does the console still behave
normally (this, of course, only applies to systems running with the
internal keyboard/display as the main console and a separate serial
login normally)?

2. Does disconnecting the serial connection and reconnecting it either
reset the connection back to a login prompt or at least start things
running again?

3. Have you checked to see if NetBSD is receiving handshaking signals
such as control-S's and control-Q's, and if so, checked to make sure
it's not just missing a control-Q or a CTS or whatever (test by hitting
control-q)?  I doubt it's something that simple, but if it were, it
would simply be minor loss, and not something drastic like a complete
crash.

In other words, is NetBSD crashing or is the serial interface getting
blocked somehow (or not being serviced properly or being intentionally
paused)?

BTW, forgive me for my ignorance, as I've never used dt.  Will dt
run over a serial console or is it too graphically oriented?

Thoughts?

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