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From: root@octopus.UUCP (Superuser)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.modems
Subject: re: 'Trailblazer uucp retry problem': NOT a Trailblazer problem!
Message-ID: <369@octopus.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 24-Nov-87 04:09:46 EST
Article-I.D.: octopus.369
Posted: Tue Nov 24 04:09:46 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 27-Nov-87 06:41:52 EST
Reply-To: root@octopus.UUCP (Superuser)
Organization: Octopus Enterprises, Cupertino, CA
Lines: 39
Keywords: fast uucp bug

Several people (including myself) have noted symptoms of a problem when
receiving uucp data over a Telebit Trailblazer modem. In my case, it
involved:

	- data gets lost in byte stream between modem and CPU while
		receiving uucp data at high speed
	- uucp goes into a retry sequence (pkcget: Alarm 1)
	- the link never recovers: it simply keeps retrying forever.
		The modem never *seems* to be able to send a good
		set of packet info.

    Well, I'm happy(?) to report that the problem is not in the modem.
I investigated as far as I could on my own, then called Telebit. They
responded immediately and completely (I should note for the record that,
in my favor- I'm located in the same city; going against me- I'm a VERY
small organization). They came out to our site (within hours) with an ASCII
analyzer, looked at the data stream, and proved convincingly that the modem
was correctly handling everything. 

Somehow, my version of uucp was locking itself into an out-of-sync mode,
couldn't recover, and never timed out either. At the time (last week), we
were running System V.1 with some BSD4.2 stuff thrown in. The uucp was the
'directory-ized' spool directory version, in case that helps. I'm really
not sure about the detailed blood line, since we don't have source. In any
case, we are now running a more recent version based on V.2 and BSD4.3, and
the problem has completely disappeared (it was easily duplicated by 
manually glitching the RS-232 line while receiving data at high speed. Now,
there's a simple retry and recovery).

So: If you are having similar problems, I'd suspect your uucp before suspecting
the Trailblazer! And here's a big positive vote for the tech support that
Telebit gives. Rather responsive in my opinion.

Disclaimer: I'm simply a happy Telebit customer.


  OOO   __| ___      Peter Holzmann, Octopus Enterprises
 OOOOOOO___/ _______ USPS: 19611 La Mar Court, Cupertino, CA 95014
  OOOOO \___/        UUCP: {hplabs!hpdsd,pyramid}!octopus!pete
___| \_____          Phone: 408/996-7746