From: amadeus@opal.cs.tu-berlin.de (Axel Richrath)
Subject: still problems with TELIX and OS2YOU serial access
Organization: Techn. University of Berlin, Germany
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 22:56:24 GMT


hello all!

here are 2 problems i have with using my COM ports...

1) i installed os2you 2.7 on my machine and i am thinking of 
   registering it. but i wont do so as long as i can't get fixed
   the following problem.
   i installed a second SIO card and jumpered it so that COM4 is
   disabled and COM3 uses interrupt 5 at address 3E8 (unfortunately
   the SIO card doesnt support interrupt levels higher than 9).
   then i have the following lines in my config.sys:
 
       device=c:\os2\com.sys (3,3E8,5)
       device=c:\os2\mdos\vcom.sys (3,3E8,5)

   to initialize my COM ports correctly i added the following
   lines:

       call=c:\os2\mode.com COM2:19200,N,8,1,DTR=ON,BUFFER=ON
       call=c:\os2\mode.com COM3:9600,N,8,1,DTR=ON,BUFFER=OFF

   so far the config.sys doesn't report any errors. COM2 is connected
   to my high speed modem and i replaced the old UART with the
   16550AFN chip. COM3 is connected to an old Qume terminal using
   a null modem wire. building the null modem i followed the 
   instructions given in the os2you help facility. so when i start
   my machine and start os2you, it detects a carrier but nothing more.
   no connection at all. now when i stop os2you, execute a system
   shutdown, reboot the machine and restart os2you it works correctly.
   i can replicate this phenomene every day. has anybody an idea what
   could be wrong? or has anybody a similar installation and could 
   tell my his/her configuration?


2) i tried a lot of communication programs that are available as
   share ware for OS/2. but i am not satisfied with neither TE/2
   (poor emulation etc...) nor PMCOMM. so my first choice still 
   would be TELIX. since TELIX is a DOS program i have some difficulties.
   the problem is whenever i get a long continuos output on the screen 
   (imagine a program on my host machine that writes a line of text
   in an endless loop or some other long output) TELIX says 'NO CARRIER' 
   after about 30-35 lines and hangs up. as u can see in the above text 
   i am using this 16550 UART chip. so what i thought first is that this 
   one could cause the problem. i am starting TELIX from a batch file 
   that seperately again calls the mode.com for COM2 with the above 
   parameters and set up the DOS session like the following:

       COM_HOLD ON
       BACKGROUND_EXECUTION OFF
       DOS_RMSIZE 400 (since TELIX uses about 320k)
       HW_ROM_TO_RAM ON
       HW_TIMER ON
       IDLE_SENSITIVITY 100 (is this of any effect???)

   the other parameters have their default values. btw - while doing long
   z-modem transfers the problem doesn't appear - so could it be that there 
   is a problem with the video output that influences the serial connection 
   (this would be strange to me). same question as above:
   can anyone out there tell me how to set up everything so TELIX
   will work correctly? btw - i once found a configuration that worked
   fine - but then someone did something bad :-) in our network and i had
   to reinstall everything and forgot how i set up the parameters for
   TELIX. if this is of any interest - i am using a TKR-1496 modem
   that works up to v.42bis and is hayes compatible.

albeit this is a very long posting i would appreciate if someone
could reply to this either by posting a follow up or (even better)
sending me an email (amadeus@cs.tu-berlin.de).

greetings, axel

PS: does anyone know how to fix this bug with the black icons on the
    desktop? i read that its a known bug... all i did is to install the
    kernel fix because the SWAPPER.DAT never shrinked...