🚀 go-pugleaf

Firstly, before last Friday, my last experience with *nix was about 8 years ago so I'm basically starting fresh!

I installed the 4 disk Slackware Aug 96 cut and the install appeared to go OK. I created a boot disk as they suggested, made my startup partition and swap partition and installed anything that sounded interesting (which meant I installed most everything) :-)

My first problem is when you startup, if you don't have the boot disk in the floppy drive, it comes up system halted. (I installed it on an Olivetti Envision P75/8/685). If you boot off the floppy, all goes OK. This is a minor annoyance.

My real problem is proabaly self caused but I don't know how to fix it. I tried many suggestions in the Linux Bible 4th Edition but none helped. Basically, from the start, I have been unable to get access to COM1 anf thus to my modem. I know the cable and modem are good because they work on another DOS machine. I have been trying with the Minicom program. In trying to get it working, I've done something because now when you do anything to access the port, it saysd cua0's resources are in use or busy. I looked for lock files but could not find any. I've rebooted but to no avail. 

What suggestions do you have and once I regain control of the port, are there any suggestions as to how to figure out why Minicom can't send anything to the port?

Cheers,

MarkL