Comtrol, RTS, Vpix

[Evan R Aussenberg]

        (ISC Unix/386, Comtrol Ultra16 & AT&T drivers)

        Branching the Equinox thread...  I  have  a  Comtrol  Ultra16.
Works  very  nicely.   It  will  do  (at  your  option) DTR and/or RTS
handshaking.  I was getting printer overruns at 19.2  to  the  printer
(Xerox  4045)  while loading fonts.  Because the Xerox doesn't support
RTS handshaking and because the Ultra16 doesn't use the DTR  line  for
data  handshaking  (if  that's the correct term) I made an easy mod to
the cable to unite the Xerox's DTR to  the  Ultra's  RTS  handshaking.
Works  great.   When  people  (this  is an office) try printing to the
Xerox and its not powered-up the spooler now waits patiently.

        Having done this, I thought I'd try the same thing for one  of
our  Wyse 150s.  It seems the Wyse keeps up fine at 19.2 (usually) but
not at 38.4.  Our Wyse doesn't support RTS so again I mapped  its  DTR
handshaking  to the Ultra's RTS handshaking.  Works great.  But then I
ran Vpix.  Worked Great.  But, coming back  to  the  shell  by  either
entering  one  from  Vpix or quiting Vpix, at the point where the Wyse
must  be  handshaking (say- deleteing/inserting 20 lines in vi) I  get
logged out and all my processes are killed as if I was on a modem line
(which I'm not) and DTR dropped. By the way, the DTR pins on the Ultra
side are not even connected for this  particular  terminal.

        To summarize:  RTS handshaking seems to work up until  quiting
from Vpix.  In Vpix, handshaking works.  After quiting Vpix, the first
attempt at handshaking kills all processes and gets you a login.  This
state remains until at least a warm reboot.  Also-  this state is only
for the  port(s) that ran the Vpix session.  Other ports will continue
to RTS handshake correctly.

        I am talking with Comtrol, but I haven't had a chance to  talk
to  this  one  tech-support person in particular yet.  In the meantime
any thoughts/experiences are welcome.  If you can replicate my problem
I'd be interested as well.

Thanks-   Evan.


-- 
Evan Ron Aussenberg
erast1 at unix.cis.pitt.edu
IN%"erast1 at pittunix"