🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <2036@nmtsun.nmt.edu>, peter@hydrovax.nmt.edu writes:
> The asynch driver is still broken. Terminals have to be run at 19200 or
> AIX throws away output characters. I have tried numerous flow control
> and bit/parity combinations, to no avail. I would really like to hang
> a 2400 baud modem on the system so I can call in from school, but the
> system (getty) won't send nl at 2400. It also locks up after I reply to the
> login prompt. IBM sent out a tech. He couldn't figure it out either,
> but verified that the systems at IBM (Albuquerque) have the same problem.
> Of course this may be a hardware bug and BSD might behave the same.
> 

While I have nothing to say about the other bugs you've mentioned since
I haven't experienced them or even worked in the environment to have the
opportunity to experience them, I do have something to say about the
above.

   We have about 12-15 clients with various models of the RT (ie:25, 125,
115, 135) as well as a model 25 (gag) at work.  At least one of each machine
is running 2.2.1 and these machines are running mostly IBM3151 terminals
but each one has at least one modem on it.  About a half and half split 
between 1200 baud and 2400 baud.  They work fine and dandy.  Since we
do our support remotely over these modems they're used quite often and
we've never experienced any troubles with them aside from Operator errors.
"What? It's supposed to be plugged into 'line'? Not 'phone'?".  In fact
we do a fair bit of uploading and downloading either via straight
ascii or an xmodem type thing.  We've never experienced lost characters.
The settings I use (or the relevant ones anyways) in devices are the 
following:

rts 2400 (1200)
pt none
bpc 8
pro dtr
dvam 0   (I know it says "0 for local, 1 for modem" but who cares?)
tt ibm3151 (or wy50, vt100 (procomm plus))

  Those are the only things I change when I hook up the modem.  Once 
I've got the modem hooked up I generally run up ATE and change the 
configuration (hayes compat) to work with the RT.  Otherwise it won't
work too well...

ie: "ATE0M0S0=1&C1Q1&W"

 I think the operative one there is "E0" since if the modem is echoing
back to the RT, and the RT is echoing back to the modem, and the modem
is echoing back to the machine..... well, you know what I mean...


 On another note, Some of the machines have AT's or clones hooked up
to them running Procomm+ at 9600 baud and they work fine too.

 Forgive me if some or all of what I've told you here is intuitively 
obvious but it's what I've been doing for every one of our clients
machines and they work fine.  (I won't say flawlessly.)

 I would however like to see BSD run on an RT.  Especially a 135 and
XWindows on a Megapel. That would seem impressive since it's something
I've never seen.  For those of you who work with this everyday I say
PPPPPHHHHHTTTTT!!!
-- 
herb@blender.UUCP

Did I tell you I'm forgetful?

In article <2036@nmtsun.nmt.edu> peter@hydrovax.nmt.edu writes:
 (.....)
>Our upgrade to 2.2.1 failed miserably due to several bad disks. It was
>nice of IBM to come out and rectify the situation, but we still had 
>down time due to it. The version that they DID install would not execute
>shell scripts or binaries properly because for some reason it sets the
>current working directory to '/' (yes root). Make fails because my files
>are not in '/'.  I have very recently installed a new version (more disks 
>borrowed from IBM). It seems to be ok now. When Make *could* find the files
>that I was compiling, it didn't work on any imbedded commands. It would
>either fail without explanation or give an error number that wasn't in the 
>manual.

Hmmm...what is your default shell?  I've seen this when people try to
do Makes and don't specify SHELL=....  Probably, though, this is
something that used to work, and it is a bug.
 
 (.....)
>The system doesn't provide job control or sockets, which is more a drawback
>of sysV than AIX specifically. The console mimics job control using the
>utilities found in the Useability Services, but it is a poor substitute
>and only good for the person using console. 

As someone else pointed out, sockets are part of AIX.  Most of the
TCP/IP user programs are socket based these days, many run under
inetd, and so forth.  

>VS/FORTRAN has bugs. Again I do not want to cite an example until I can
>bring verified source code to post. I haven't looked under 2.2.1, but the 
>fortran compiler has a poorly written shell script for a front end. It's the 
>three pass variety and ALWAYS linked (even if there were warnings and/or 
>errors) when it was finished. We re-wrote it, but it is a pain none the less. 
>Our earlier version of the OS came with F77. This one doesn't. IBM says
>we have to purchase it now.  The VS/FORTRAN does have its saving graces. 
>VAX mode (although buggy) has drastically reduced the time it took to port 
>some applications from the VAX.

Under AIX, as far as I know, Fortran was always extra cost.  We're
glad to hear that it has bugs, as if it didn't, software engineers the
world over would have to rethink their assumptions. :-)  I can only
encourage you to contact the defect support people and complain.  It
is certain that you will get more attention than I would.

 (.....)

>There are no man pages, and I have yet to get the 'help' command to yeild
>anything resembleing an informative answer. Mostly all I get is a '... not
>found' message. 

Man pages cost $50/machine extra, from what I remember.  Contact your
salesman. 

>UUCP is broken. Anything I try to run says that it wants some earlier 
>version of the VRM. A lot of files referenced in the manual aren't even
>there. I *know* it's installed properly because I went back and did it again.

In 2.2, the old UUCP was replaced with HoneyDanBer UUCP.  If you have
an old manual, well, lots of the files (L.sys) won't be there.  I had
a real early copy of 2.2, and got HDB UUCP working by using the
Nutshell handbooks.

 (.....)

>In the same room with the RT is a VAX 11/730 running MORE/BSD 4.3. The RT
>runs circles (many many circles) around that machine speed wise, but our
>programmers claim they get better productivity from the 730 even though it's 
>slow. BSD came with C, PASCAL, Fortran, Ingres, and a host of tools that make 
>life easy. AIX requires that we purchase each of these, yet is more expensive
>for the basic system than my entire BSD distibution. The BSD versions of
>the compilers all work and work well. The IBM compilers are buggy and hard
>to use.

There are two C compilers for AIX.  Portable C is free, the other C
compiler costs money.  I do everything with Portable C, personally.

 (.....)
>There is a list of problems sitting on my desk. I will document them better
>and email them to anyone who's interested.

I encourage you to call defect support with information about these
problems, where the problems are defects.  Where they are not defects,
but design problems, I encourage you to report them to your branch
folks, so that they will know what you need, and can feed your
requirements back into the process.


-- 
Nick Simicich --- uunet!bywater!scifi!njs --- njs@ibm.com (Internet)