🚀 go-pugleaf

Folks,

	I've been fiddling with the same problem on and off for the past
few weeks. The problem deals with communicating between the Front-End and
Back-End machines (Sun 3/50's), and may be a problem with odt. I am using the
"regular" version of odt vs. the distributed version. Have any of you seen the
following behavior:

When typing commands, all characters of the command are echoed correctly to my
screen. After pressing <return>, things seem to hang, and after pressing
<return> a few more times, I get a "command: not found" error message. However,
"command: not found" would appear as "c  m nd: not found", with missing letters.
typing the same command several times results in different letters missing
(eg. "c  m nd: not found" or com  nd: not found or "  mm  d: not found"). I've
re-compiled with the PRINTERRORS flag turned on, and I see that I am getting
"Parity Error, Data Overrun, Framing Error" errors. Zoinks! In an effort to
find out what's going on (bad ports, odt, etc.), I performed the following 
tests:

	I connected my serial cable between my Front-End machine and a terminal,
and then did the following:

	1). On Front-End Machine: cat big-text-file > /dev/ttya
		-- all text appeared exactly as it should on the terminal

	2). On Front-End Machine: cat < /dev/ttya
	    On terminal: held down the 'f' key and generated 400 characters,
			 then pressed return
		-- saw roughly 140 consecutive 'f' characters on Front-End
		   Machine

	3). `odt' on Front-End Machine
		-- All characters typed on the console appear correctly on
		   the terminal. HOWEVER, when typing on the terminal, many 
		   of the characters were dropped when displayed on the 
		   console, exactly as I described when receiving error
		   messages back from Xinu.

             Eg.  SUN to terminal:  Typing "this is a test" appears as
					   "this is a test"

                  terminal to SUN:  Typing "this is a test" appears as
				           "th s    a   st"

	4). `odt' on Front-End Machine
	    Held down a single key on the terminal:
			"a"'s DO NOT appear
			"b"'s DO NOT appear
			"c"'s appear
			"d"'s DO NOT appear
			"e"'s appear
			"f"'s appear
			"g"'s DO NOT appear
			"h"'s DO NOT appear
			"i"'s appear
			 
	    etc., etc.

I performed the same tests from other Sun 3/50's; I used 2 different cables -
same results. What do you think? Any ideas? Has this happened to you? Is odt
the culprit? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.


						kevind

P.S. Yes, I know Thomas Narten teaches at this school. He is away on vacation
     for a few weeks, and I am stuck in this user room with bread and water
     until this project works...