slip for sysv386 unix?

[Jim Lick]

In article <1991Feb1.130904.14880 at minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au> s900387 at minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au (Craig Macbride) writes:
>Well, SLIP in ISC's version 2.2 certainly works ... well, for most things,
>anyway. rcp, rlogin, and so on across a serial line are not too slow (if you
>are used to modems!), but if I attempt to use talk, it sits and puts up a
>message about contacting the other machine. Unfortunately that's all it does:
>put up a message. It will sit there all day if you let it, without any sign of
>activity at the other machine.

This is a common problem.  The problem is that there is more than one
'standard' for talk.  In particular, I understand that there is a big
difference between the versions for 4.2 and 4.3 BSD, and many machines use
the former, while some use the latter.  I've also heard that there is also a
byte-order problem, but haven't had this confirmed.  In practice, since I
use Sun computers mostly, I can pretty much only talk to other Sun systems.
I've heard that you can sort of solve this by getting the BSD sources to
talk and compile it, but this still leaves a lot to be desired.  I prefer to
take a different route and use either irc, Tinymud, or another 'chat'
system.

In any case, ISC is not really to blame for this problem.

                            Jim Lick		       
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