On Wed, 18 Dec 1996, Alexander Hayward wrote:

> I've been having a few problems with the serial port and recent kernels.
> 
> Sometimes RiscBSD just hangs when dip starts, but not always. I think it 
> may be related to whether I turn the modem on before I boot RiscBSD or 
> not... I'm not sure. Atl-Delete then ctrl-D succeeds in partly rebooting 
> the machine - its sorta clicks and the floppy drive whirrs a bit but it 
> seems to get stuck there. It needs a proper reset before it will restart. 
> I can't remember if this happens all the time either...
> 
> The most recent kerne(4871?) seems to give the error 'Com port 
> initialization failed' or something along those lines, before similarly 
> hanging.

Hi,
  Ah this is interesting ....

I have seen this problem recently but could not find a cause.
The indication was that the driver was hanging up waiting for the serial 
chip.
What happens is when you open it it will try and clear the serial FIFO etc.
sometime I found that no matter how many bytes were read from the serial 
port the status register indicated there were still bytes present.
As only I appeared to be experiencing the problem I had decided that this 
was probably a hardware fault with my machine.

I'll have another look at the problem.

CHeers,
				Mark


Mark Brinicombe				amb@physig.ph.kcl.ac.uk
Research Associate			http://www.ph.kcl.ac.uk/~amb/
Department of Physics			tel: 0171 873 2894
King's College London			fax: 0171 873 2716