>>> Does the serial console actually respond to BREAK or is that a Sun
>>> or PDP-11 phenomenon?  I thought that the equivalent stimulus for
>>> Alpha and Vax was <ctrl>P.
>> Sun phenomenon.

Well, some of the more recent VAXen also do BREAK - the MicroVAX-II,
for example.  (As I think someone else already pointed out.)

>> Together with the 'lets halt when we switch [off] the [terminal]
> Switch off the terminal is just another way to send BREAK on the
> serial line.

Well, maybe.  I suspect it's more "random framing error", and the
software responds to any framing error, not just a break condition, by
doing whatever its thing is.  (Of course, I suspect that some of the
dumber serial line hardware out there can't tell a break from any other
framing error, which could be part of this.  I don't know whether the
8530 can, though it's stupid enough in other respects it wouldn't
surprise me if it were stupid this way too.

Of course, on ports where it's the kernel that implements it, it can be
anything the driver writers care to make it. :-)

/~\ The ASCII				der Mouse
\ / Ribbon Campaign
 X  Against HTML	       mouse@rodents.montreal.qc.ca
/ \ Email!	     7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39  4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B