Can anybody help me?

I am developing a utility for automating message paging to a BT alphanumeric pager.

I am using a USR 56K Fax-modem connected to /dev/cuab on a Sun Ultra-10. I am using the UNIX 'tip' utility to connect to the modem and I have configured the modem as follows: Baud Rate: 1200, Parity: even, Data Bits: 7, Start Bits: 1, Stop Bits: 1, Flow Control: XON/XOFF, Error Correction: off. Note: these settings are specified by the BT Paging Service which uses the TAP protocol standard.

The problem that I am seeing is as follows:

I fire up tip and connect to the modem OK, but after issuing the Hayes command to dial the paging service, e.g. ATX0DT<PHONENUMBER>, I lose local echo on the terminal window I am using. Note, however, that I can successfully connect to the paging service and can successfully send a message to a pager. However, this is done by blindly typing the TAP commands into the window (very quickly to avoid a timeout!) once I have connected to the paging service. Moreover, I also lose the capability of cut&pasting the Hayes/TAP commands into the terminal window.

It is very important that I get local echo working as I want to automate the complete process using Expect. I appreciate that I could use Kermit to do the job for me, but I have come so far with this that I just want to complete it.

I have tried Solaris 2.6/7/8 and experience the same problem on each OS. Also, the problem occurs under both Openlook and CDE.

I read somewhere that 'tip' sometimes has problems when used in terminal windows that have scrollbars. Therefore, I have been using a shell tool with no scrollbar.

I have also tried various different terminal types notably: vt100, xterm, sun-cmd, AT386.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance.