After several years of connecting to my ISP using kermit to
dial and then starting pppd, I've finally taken the time to set
up a chat script.  This is definitely more convient (when the ISP
is not busy)!  But when I do this I get the following messages
from the kernel ppp device driver.

Jan  4 22:44:34 jerrican /netbsd: ppp0: bad protocol 5050
Jan  4 22:44:34 jerrican /netbsd: ppp0: no compressor for [15 3 29], 3
Jan  4 22:44:34 jerrican /netbsd: ppp0: no compressor for [18 4 8], 4

The first is from ppp_tty.c, while the second two are from if_ppp.c.
Just what exactly do they mean?  I get them every time I
use the pppd/chat method to establish a ppp connection.  But if
I use kermit to dial and then start pppd after I have logged
in and the remote has already sent a bunch of "ppp stuff", I
don't get these messages.

I have also gotten these messages; after which my connection
was dropped.  (I've only seen this once but again only with
the pppd/chat combo as far as I know).

Jan  6 21:23:18 jerrican /netbsd: ppp0: bad fcs 66f0
Jan  6 21:23:42 jerrican /netbsd: ppp0: bad fcs a490

These are also from ppp_tty.c.  Again what do they mean?

I have another problem that may or may not be related to this.
After waiting almost a year to upgrade from 1.2.1 to 1.3.2
(hey things were stable and worked and other things were more
pressing), I upgraded to 1.3.2 at the end of November.
(I'm currently in the process of upgrading to 1.3.3 - rebooting
with 1.3.3 kernel after I send this.)

My 1.3.2 upgrade has not be exactly smooth. It has been by far
the roughest upgrade I've made (or can remember).  I seemed to
hit quite a few surprises like a changed eithernet driver from
ed -> we;  new if_config.xxx instead of hostname.xxx; routed
doesn't work with pppd the same as it did with 1.2.1 and earlier
-- who knew I didn't really need to be running it since I had
been running it since 0.9 days!); removal of 
route add $hostname localhost from network startup; etc....  
I think a better job of  describing changes that will affect
upgraders needs to be done.

But the kicker is that after upgrading to 1.3.2 I found that I
could not use the internal modem at all after the system booted
multiuser.  This system is a Zeos 486/33 with a Zoom 28.8 internal
modem as com3 since the Zeos has older UARTS.  I could use the
modem fine booting single user and either kermit or tip.  After
going multiuser it acted hung.  What I came to find out was that
the ttyflags command that is run at the start of the rc script
was hanging the port.  I had no such problem with 1.1, 1.2, or 1.2.1.
I now have the ttyflags stuff commented out.

Now I thought that maybe it was setting some flag badly (or
changing the defaults that were there at boot) so I hacked
ttyflags to use the get ioctl instead of the set ioctl and
print out the results!  Woa! this hung the port too!  Now
I have not had much time to look at this one and looking at
the code did not provide any quick insights since this is
an area I'm not familiar with.

After long winded explaination, he gets to the point.  Could
this be releated to the ppp problems above?  Or is it a new
problem?  I tend to think it is a new one but maybe I have
something configured wrong.  I did notice that the com driver
has changed quite a bit since 1.2.1.  Below is the dmesg output.

Copyright (c) 1996, 1997, 1998
    The NetBSD Foundation, Inc.  All rights reserved.
Copyright (c) 1982, 1986, 1989, 1991, 1993
    The Regents of the University of California.  All rights reserved.

NetBSD 1.3.2 (JERRICAN) #3: Wed Dec 30 13:42:30 CST 1998
    ginsbach@jerrican.exiter.com:/usr/src/sys/arch/i386/compile/JERRICAN
cpu0: Intel 486DX (486-class)
real mem  = 16384000
avail mem = 14221312
using 225 buffers containing 921600 bytes of memory
mainbus0 (root)
isa0 at mainbus0
aic0 at isa0 port 0x340-0x35f irq 11
scsibus0 at aic0: 8 targets
cd0 at scsibus0 targ 2 lun 0: <NEC, CD-ROM DRIVE:500, 2.8> SCSI2 5/cdrom
removable
sd0 at scsibus0 targ 3 lun 0: <SEAGATE, ST51080N, 0913> SCSI2 0/direct
fixed
sd0: 1030MB, 4826 cyl, 4 head, 109 sec, 512 bytes/sect x 2109840 sectors
com0 at isa0 port 0x3f8-0x3ff irq 4: ns8250 or ns16450, no fifo
com1 at isa0 port 0x2f8-0x2ff irq 3: ns8250 or ns16450, no fifo
com3 at isa0 port 0x2e8-0x2ef irq 3: ns16550a, working fifo
lpt2 at isa0 port 0x3bc-0x3bf: polled
wdc0 at isa0 port 0x1f0-0x1f7 irq 14
atapibus0 at wdc0
wd0 at wdc0 drive 0: <ST3283A>
wd0: using 16-sector 16-bit pio transfers, chs mode
wd0: 233MB, 978 cyl, 14 head, 35 sec, 512 bytes/sec
wd1 at wdc0 drive 1: <WDC AC2420H>
wd1: using 16-sector 16-bit pio transfers, chs mode
wd1: 405MB, 989 cyl, 15 head, 56 sec, 512 bytes/sec
wt0 at isa0 port 0x300-0x301 irq 5 drq 1: type <Wangtek>
we0 at isa0 port 0x280-0x29f iomem 0xd0000-0xd1fff irq 9
we0: WD8013WC Ethernet (8-bit)
we0: Ethernet address 00:00:c0:d1:f1:44
sb0 at isa0 port 0x220-0x237 irq 10 drq 3 drq2 6: dsp v4.12
audio0 at sb0
npx0 at isa0 port 0xf0-0xff: using exception 16
pc0 at isa0 port 0x60-0x6f irq 1: color
pc0: console
fdc0 at isa0 port 0x3f0-0x3f7 irq 6 drq 2
fd0 at fdc0 drive 0: 1.2MB, 80 cyl, 2 head, 15 sec
fd1 at fdc0 drive 1: 1.44MB, 80 cyl, 2 head, 18 sec
biomask 4860 netmask 4a60 ttymask 4a62
boot device: wd0
root on wd0a dumps on wd0b
root file system type: ffs

I hope that someone can help after this long and ramblin message.

PS - We (NetBSD user community) really need to get the mailing
archives full text searchable (not just the indexes).  Kind of
like the FreeBSD ones.  I killed a lot of time searching the
archives for stuff that might be related to my problems.  I played
with freeWAIS (what FreeBSD uses) and Isite (CNDIR's WAIS follow-on)
a bit and would be willing to help work on setting this up.

-- 
Brian Ginsbach                                  <ginsbach@spacestar.net>