On 25 May 1998, Patrick Welche writes:

> I have now switched to a modem with more control lights, and a
> printed manual, but still don't seem to find the essence of the
> problem. Both with getty and with kermit running on the NetBSD box,
> the DTR light is on (ie., no volts on line) and the AA light is on
> (once one sets s0<>0). There is the same pattern of lights in both
> instances:

>       TST  HS  AA  CD  OH  RD  SD  TR  MR
>        on  on  on off off off off  on  on
> yet with
>   188 ??  S      0:00.05 /usr/libexec/uugetty std.9600 tty00
> running, the modem never answers, but with kermit, it does.

Can you borrow a breakout box and check DSR, RTS, CTS, RI, etc that
way?  Can you check that Kermit is not initializing the modem in any
way when it opens the device?

Can you obtain a different serial cable, just in case the one you have
is either miswired or mising some wires?  You want a nice boring
straight through cable with all wires present and correct.  This seems
very unlikely as a cause, but is fairly easy to check (just swap the
cable), so it might be worth doing.

Logic demands (!) that there must be a difference in either the modem
state as determined by its init string (is Kermit believing there is a
modem on that device and initializing it?  Or just connecting to it as
a straight serial line and so not sending out any init commands?), or
else in the state of the RS232 signal lines (which the breakout box
should help you detect).

To gain some additional info, you might try using cu and/or tip to
connect to the serial device and see whether the modem answers or not.

I would try this out here, except that my spare test machine just got
borrowed by a colleague...

Jonathan
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