Subject: Serial Port
To: None <port-i386@NetBSD.ORG>
From: Nick Loman <nick@csosl.co.uk>
List: port-i386
Date: 07/04/1996 22:54:05
Hey there.\

I'd like to start by saying how fantastic NetBSD is! I'm really impressed with it's flexibility and scope, and everything I've needed has been included with the distributions- took a couple of installs, but with a bit of help I'm running AOK.

The only problem that I've not managed to resolve over a period of about a month is the serial port. I run a standard PC serial card with 16550's and "working fifo's", but I cannot for the life of me access the port through any programs what so ever.

The IRQ settings and DMA addresses on bootup appear to be correct, and they definately do not conflict with any other cards installed. I've tried two things:

Editing /etc/ttys: and using a line with std.19200, dialup on local rtscts, killing init with -1 and trying to login using a nullmodem link to /dev/tty00. The getty is activated, but I cannot get any I/O from the connected terminal- no matter what settings I use.

Editing /etc/ttys: and using the line std.19200 off, and then attempting to use cu -l /dev/tty00 and trying to type some characters to appear on the other machine- I get a read/write error reported after the first batch of chars. are typed by me.

I've also compiled up 'wermit' and tried to run that- no luck there. I've tried lots of stty settings but still not a dicky out of the serial port.

I'm at a bit of a lost, I'm running a kernel of my own compilation, but the GENERIC one also doesn't do anything, I'm running NetBSD 1.1 directly from the ftp.entbsd.org site.

Any suggestions would be appreciated- I've read through the first 150 mailing-list archives on the FTP site but no clues there (even the ones with seemingly exact same problem).

Thanks for your time...


Nick Loman.
http://www.csosl.co.uk/, nick@csosl.co.uk