USR 56 reboot init problem

mcdonc@iqgroup.com (mcdonc@iqgroup.com)
Thu, 26 Nov 1998 04:16:17 GMT


I'm using mgetty+sendfax for its autoppp features.  I have users dial in to a
RedHat 5.0 Linux box that has four USR External 56K Faxmodems (v90/x2)
attached to it.  I don't use mgetty+sendfax for its fax features, only for
the data features.  It works great, many thanks!!  But, I have a problem....

The modems are attached to serial ports coming off of 2 Chase IO Xtra ISA
cards on the bus of an HP Brio.  They are set to ttyS0 - 3f8 irq 4, ttyS1 -
2f8 irq 3, ttyS2 - 3e8 irq 5, ttyS3 2e8 irq 2/9, and all are recognized
successfully by setserial auto_irq, etc.

Mgetty indicates that the faxmodem is detected as a USR Courier/Sportster 56k
(a return code of 5601).

The problem is this... when the box gets rebooted or turned off and turned
back on (for whatever reasons), the modems dont recognize *any* AT commands
until you physically turn them off and turn them back on via the power switch
or by unplugging them.	Without a physical reset, the modems wont respond to
the mgetty init string (or any commands via minicom, etc.).  (One strange
thing though - they *do* echo characters sent to them... they just wont
respond with an OK or accept any AT commands).	This happen *only* after a
system reboot. When I turn the things on and off after a reboot (and after
mgetty has been spawned by init), everything works fine.  I can't be there
24/7, though to flip power switches, though, so I need to fix this somehow.

I did read the mgetty documentation and saw the part about USR modems not
liking dtr-toggle, so I added the appropriate settings to the mgetty.config
and it doesnt drop DTR anymore to reset the modem, but the modem still cant
init after a reboot.  I additionally added an enormous delay in the form of
/d/d/d/d/d/d/d/d, et. al. to the beginning of the mgetty modem init string,
no luck.  In the course of troubleshooting I tried both mgetty-1.1.9 and
mgetty 1.1.14.	During the compilation of .14, I changed the settings of
DO_CHAT_SEND_DELAY to 100ms, still no luck.  I futzed around with init
strings, no luck.  I changed port speeds via setserial, via mgetty, etc. 
About 20 other things I probably can't remember too.  All no cigar.

I know this isn't an mgetty problem, but I'm hoping that maybe someone here
has had a similar experience and can point me in the right direction.  I'm
stumped.  Any advice in the form of how to pound the things into shape after
a reboot would be greatly appreciated!

One more strange thing about these modems... the Hayes-command-set value &D3
(reset on DTR low) does not get saved to NVRAM with an AT&W, they always
report AT&D2 when you ATZ them, though all the other changes I made to the
command set made it into NVRAM.  There's another S-register setting (S13=1)
that seems to perform the same function, however.

Many thanks in advance,

Chris McDonough
mcdonc@iqgroup.com
InfoQuest Group, Inc.

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