UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users

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.

tip sends the characters to the remote system which is expected to echo them back. If that is not happening, the problem is at the remote system.

I see in the man page that you can set the tip variable halfduplex to on via a ~s command or by putting it .tiprc. Give that a try. Switching to half duplex mode should solve the problem.

Thanks Perderabo,

setting Half-Duplex on the dialer solved the problem.

Nice one. Your help is much appreciated.

Beatnik