[H-GEN] Of modems and terminals.

[Robert Brockway]

On Thu, 28 Aug 1997, Jason Parker wrote:

> Okay people, time for a *real* challenge.  ;)

Serial? No sweat ;-)
 
> I've just purchased a modem for fridge, and I'm looking at using it to
> connect via PPP to UQ.  (Of course.)  But I'd still like to keep my
> olde Digital vt320 open as well.  Now as both my serial ports are
> being used (mouse and term/modem) I gather that I will need another
> serial card, right? [1]

A 3rd serial port is a good plan :)
 
> I've heard nasty things said about Linux and extra serial ports.  Not

Anyone who said that just didn't know what they were doing ;-)  It's
pretty straight forward.

> wanting to waste valuable net resources (snigger) doing a search
> myself, I'm now plundering the collective memory of HUMBUG.  What can
> I do to get around this?  [2]

Ok, setup a 3rd serial port using an unused irq.  2 or 5 are often unused.
A couple of caveats: 5 is often used by sound cards. 2 can actually be
used by some VGA (but not SVGA afaik) cards.  Not a huge worry here - it
is pretty rare.  If you can manage it, put the modem on irq 2,10,11,12 or
15 in that order of preference (the reason for that order of preference is
left as an exercies for the reader :-)  Remember irq 2=irq 9.  IRQs on the
2nd irq chip (irq 8-15) actually have better priority than irq 3-7. On a
slowish box (486 and below) you want to put a hight speed modem up there
to prevent serial overflow if you can :-)  Ok, so most people don't
push a 486 enough to cause a real problem, but why not avoid the issue :-)

Anyway, use setserial to setup the serial port with the correct irq.  Due
to IBM braindamage it is often necessary to initialise cua3 (com4) using
setserial even if the irq is right by default :-)  Lets see, then you
should be able to talk to the modem using minicom to make sure it is all
working, then you can look at PPP.
I hope this helps.
Cheers,	
	-Robert

 
> Cheers, and TIA,
> Jason `Shit I'm going to miss my dumbterm' Parker

Just run 3 serial devices like I do.  One day, I might make it 4 ;-)

> [1] : There *is* a spare paralell port (or at least I think so, I
> never was good at telling those...) but I /don't think/ that that is
> going to be very useful.  ;)

Not much except maybe for plip to an an XT running NCSA telnet with the
PLIP driver :-)

> [2] : No, installing a non-Linux system is not an option.  Sorry, but
> I've spent **far** to much time on fridge in her Linux incarnation to
> install *BSD, or >shudder< Minix.  (Hmmmm.  Asbestos suit /on/... :)

No comment :-)
Cheers,
	-Robert

--Robert Brockway. Email: robert at zen.humbug.org.au, president at humbug.org.au
                          r.brockway at mailbox.uq.edu.au, robert at plugged.net.au
                   WWW:   http://www.humbug.org.au/~robert
                   President of HUMBUG (http://www.humbug.org.au)

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