From: ellis@nova.gmi.edu (Stew Ellis)
Subject: Not IRQ2 problem after all, SYSVR4 serial devices not working
Organization: GMI Engineering&Management Institute, Flint, MI
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1992 19:59:00 GMT

I posted here a couple of days ago concerning problems with serial ports
under Intel SYSVR4.0.3 that I erroneously attributed to IRQ2 from Boca
ET4000 svga card.  Many people offered advice on how to find the trace and
be sure it was interrupted.  I took the board out and discovered that the
BOCA is one of those boards that lacks the IRQ2 trace.  No foil in position
4 on the solder side of the card.  Back to square one.

Configuration:
   Intel 301Z with 12M of 32 bit memory and 387
   1.2 M drive A:, 1.44 M drive B:
   Boca ET4000-based SVGA card OR Oak 256K EVGA card(with IRQ2)
   250M MFM drive, 230M in SYSVR4 partition
   Intel PCL2NIA "smart" ethernet card
   2 Intel ICC 6 port intelligent serial cards
   Archive 499 QIC-02 controller with 60M Archive tape drive
   All hardware jumpered to the values for IRQ and address that are
     specified in the release notes: 2(9) for enet, 5 for tape, 10 for both
     ICC's.

Software:
   Zenith DOS 3.3+ on bootable DOS partition(formatted as 3.2-style
     partition)
   Intel SYSVR4.0.3, shipped at about the same time that ISC took over
     Intel's UNIX end-user business.  Should be nearly identical to early
     ISC SYSR4.0.3(Did they ever make additional changes?), with all
     standard packages installed, plus multiuser.  The ICC drivers come from
     an Intel "end-of-life" kit. Marked release 2 for SYSVR4.

Symptom:
   All attempts to access any of the serial ports fail with "unable to
     create"(attempting 'cat /.profile > /dev/tty00{s|h}'), or DEVICE
     UNAVAILABLE or UNABLE TO ACCESS DEVICE(cu -l /dev/tty00{s|h} -s 2400).
     The curly braces indicate optional parameters.  These messages vary
     a little from port to port on the ICC's ( ttyi[a-l] or ttyi[A-L] ).
     All of these are while executing as root or as a regular user with
     $HOME/.profile.

I first erroneously associated the failure condition with the possibility
that there was a conflict between the retrace interrupt found on many VGA
boards and the fact that the ICC's were on 10.  Presumably Intel should be
able to handle the potential conflicts between the recommended 9 for the
enet and 10 for the serial cards, all their hardware and drivers.  In the
last stage of the boot process, code for the 186 on the ICC card is normally
loaded to device /dev/icc.  With the Boca card in I get an error message
about not finding /dev/icc.  With the Oak card the "firmware" loads alright,
but the same errors are encountered in trying to access either the ICC
serial ports or the COM1-tty00 as before.  I ran pkgchk, and got a number of
errors concerning chksums and permissions, including in the asy pieces.  One
real funny thing is that even though I cannot access tty00, I can install a
Logitech 3-button C9 serial mouse with mouseadmin and it will work with the
stock X11R3.

So I removed the ICC package using sysadm, relinked the kernel and
rebooted.  I still cannot access tty00 with cu or cat.  I suppose the next
step is to reload icc and see if that helps.  Then reload SYSVR4 and run
pkgchk.  Even loading from tape, however that is a several hour process
which sometimes hangs when a parity error occurs, making me start over.

Has anyone experienced similar problems (even vaguely similar may help)?  I
read about buggy asy, could that have anything to do with it?  Since the
serial port on the MB is known good with DOS, and the ICC boards work fine
with Intel SYSVR3.2.2 or Xenix on other boxes, I am pretty sure I am having
either a software problem or one of those synergistic FUBAR's that DOS
hardware is so good at.

Any shots in the dark will also be appreciated.  Thank you.


--
--                                                        ___________________
  R.Stewart(Stew) Ellis, Assoc.Prof., (Off)313-762-9765  /   _____  ______ 
  Humanities & Social Science,  GMI Eng.& Mgmt. Inst.   /        / /  /  / /
  Flint, MI 48504      ellis@nova.gmi.edu              /________/ /  /  / /
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sysv386