I've compiled a new 1.4.1 kernel with support for the cyclades card,
noted that the card is recognized on boot, and created the device
nodes for it, but I can't use any of the serial ports on the breakout
box without ultimately crashing my NetBSD box in a rather spectacular
fashion.

Here's a bit of info to start with:

xdsl014% dmesg | grep cy | grep -v cyl
cy0 at pci0 dev 15 function 0: interrupting at irq 10
cy0: 16 ports
xdsl014% ls -l /dev/ttyC0
crw-rw-rw-  1 uucp  wheel  38, 0 Dec 29 23:20 /dev/ttyC0

I've connected an RS232-mini-tester purchased from Radio Shack to the
first serial port on the Cyclades's breakout box. This tester is just
a box with a bunch of LEDs that shows the status of each line. When I
plug it into the first serial port on the breakout box, the TD, RTS,
and DTR LEDs light up green. Then I fire up kermit and do a 'set line
/dev/ttyC0'. At this point, the TD LED remains green, but the RTS and
DTR LEDs both turn red. Then kermit freezes up. I usually try
(unsuccessfully) to kill kermit. A few minutes later, my machine will
freeze up and require a reboot.

The fact that the lights on the tester change tells me that the cy
driver is indeed communicating with the cyclades board and that I've
created the right device nodes, but the fact that I am unable to
actually communicate with anything connected to the serial ports or to
disconnect from those ports makes me wonder if maybe NetBSD 1.4.1's cy
driver doesn't fully support my particular variety of (PCI bus)
Cyclades board, the Cyclom-16YeP/DB25.

I'd provide more info, but I'm unsure how to use the CY_DEBUG kernel
configuration option mentioned in the man page for NetBSD's cy
driver, and don't want to have to crash my machine fruitlessly. Any
help or advice would be appreciated.

Thanks.

-Zach Fine
czyz@serv.net