NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #1/NN_1993_1.iso/spool/comp/sys/3b1/4247

Text File | 1993-01-13 | 6.3 KB | 121 lines

Newsgroups: comp.sys.3b1
Path: sparky!uunet!ceilidh!dnichols
From: [e-mail] (DoN. Nichols)
Subject: Re: Miscellaneous Questions
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail] (Usenet)
Nntp-Posting-Host: shindig
Organization: D and D Data, Vienna VA
References: <[e-mail]>
Distribution: usa
Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1993 04:43:21 GMT
Lines: 107

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Patrick C Greer) writes:
>Ok, now that I'm back at school, I can ask some of the questions I have wanted
>ask about general stuff.
>
>1)  I have my extrenal modem working in Hayes mode, but my 3B1 occasionally
>sends a getty and then a login prompt to my modem.  I'm a little confused
>why it does this, and it causes my computer to almost halt completely.  I can't

    What is probably the problem is that the modem is set to echo
whatever it receives from the computer.  Well, once the getty sends a
'login:' prompt to the modem, it echos it to the computer, the computer then
sends a 'Password:' prompt, which also gets echoed.  You *could* probably
get around this by setting up an account whose login name is "login:', and
whose password is "password:", but this is hardly secure, and then you
probably would have the shell and the modem shouting at each other. :-)

    A better way would be to disable the echo in the modem.  You should
also set the modem to maximum quiet mode. You'll still get a burst of
activity when the phone rings, but it should die down almost immediately.
(I'm presuming in all this that you want to enable others to log into your
machine via the modem.)  If you want the modem to be used only for outgoing
calls, just turn off the getty by editing /etc/inittab, so that the entry
for that port starts with a ':', rather than with a space, or replace the
word 'respawn' with 'off' in the appropriate line.

    With the echoing turned off, you have a bit more trouble manually
issuing commands to the modem, so you may have to start with the commands to
re-enable echo and status reporting.

>type very well when this happens.  Sometimes, it just goes away but I have no
>why.  Also, did anyone else have to change their gettydefs file in order to
>use a hayes modem?  The AT int AT\&T was causing problems.

    Depending on the modem, the whole string can cause even more of a
problem.  'AT&T' is the command to turn on the test mode in the Telebit
modems, at least.  Perhaps some of the later Hayes modems also did this.

>2) A lot of small gas dealers (propane suppliers) bought 3B1's because they
>were being offered by a company (I forgot the name) along with some accounting
>and business software designed for the propane business.  I have a friend who
>has one of these machines for his business but he is rapidly running out of
>space on his hard drive.  Is there anything I might be able to suggest to him
>that he could do to solve this problem that would not nullify his service
>contract with NCR?  He still needs that support.  The company that wrote

    What size of hard disk does his 3B1 have?  Some were shipped with
67MB, others with just 40MB.  (And the 7300s were shipped with only 20MB or
even 10MB.)  If he has the 40MB, it should be possible to have the drive
replaced with the 67MB drive, and still have it certifiable under service
contract, since this was a stock configuration.

>the software does remote upgrades, but they are very sloppy about it.
>The company he bought the whole package from is offering him an upgrade
>for $800.00 where he can send off his 3B1 and they will convert it into
>a DOS machine.  They will remove all the unix system files and change the
>system completely!  (What a waste!)  I advised him not to do this, but
>he needs some kind of solution for his problem.  Any suggestions?

    It won't make a *good* DOS machine (assuming that there *is* such a
thing.)  Can he get the software for a DOS machine for not too much extra?
Perhaps he can pick up a used DOS machine (since people are always
upgrading), and keep the 3B1 as a unix box.

>3)  I have the man package off Ohio-State, and I was considering an
>idea while I was home this last month.  What would be the big differences
>in the man pages for a 3B2 running UNIX 3.2?  Would the basic commands
>be the same.  I am considering trying to port these man pages to my 3B1
>and see what happens.  Anyone tried to do this?  How different are the two
>versions of UNIX?

    I think that the big problem is licensing.  You need a separate
license to have machine-readable man pages for the 3B1, and I have never
heard of anyone getting one.  (It is partially tied in with some deal that
AT&T made with the publishing house that printed their bound unix man sets
for sale in bookstores.

>4) Finally:  Is there a way to configure the stock uucp to use an
>external hayes modem, or do I need to break down and get HDB or Taylor?

    If you aren't running HDB, it is more difficult to cleanly run a
single modem as both incoming and outgoing.  Perhaps you should take the
step to HDB, since it doesn't cost, and isn't *that* much more difficult.
Also, you'll find more help on difficult projects, since the serious users
have generally all switched to HDB.

>5) P.S.  I need some help installing some of the libraries on Ohio-State's
>archives like dirent.cpio.Z.  Anyone else who has done this, please let me know.

    What's to need to know?  You just unpack them, compile them, and put
them in /usr/lib under the name libdirent.a, and mention -ldirent on the
compiler command line when you intend to use them.  You can't squeeze them
into the stock shared libs, and custom shared libs cause code to break when
you move it to a system that doesn't have the custom shared libs.  With the
plain static libs, you link the necessary code into the program, and it
travels with the program.  (Oh, yes, you also need to move some header files
for dirent into the /usr/include tree.  That is all spelled out in the
information with the libraries.  I'd have to go look at the source again to
refresh my memory, and that is all on tape somewhere.  You have the package
fresh, so just unpack it and read what it says.

    Good Luck
        DoN.
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