Minicom slow

Stan Lobunets

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Sep 24, 1996, 3:00:00 AM9/24/96

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I was trying to log in to my ISP using minicom (for the first time). For some
reason everything was slow - I would type a command (eg. adtd 33...), and it
would take several seconds to appear on the console. I'm using RedHat 3.0.3,
and I'm very new to Linux. Thanks for any tips.

Stan Lobunets

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Sep 25, 1996, 3:00:00 AM9/25/96

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To follow up on my own post, same happens in Seymor. Do I need to configure
something? It feels like I'm connecting at 300bps. Thanks much.

Miquel van Smoorenburg

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Sep 25, 1996, 3:00:00 AM9/25/96

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In article <529col$v...@news.akula.com>, Stan Lobunets <n...@akula.com> wrote:
>I was trying to log in to my ISP using minicom (for the first time). For some
>reason everything was slow - I would type a command (eg. adtd 33...), and it
>would take several seconds to appear on the console. I'm using RedHat 3.0.3,
>and I'm very new to Linux. Thanks for any tips.

You have a hardware problem. Some other piece of equipment uses the
interrupt of your serial port, 3 or 4. Do "cat /proc/interrupts" to find out
which.

Simon Roberts

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Sep 27, 1996, 3:00:00 AM9/27/96

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Stan Lobunets (n...@akula.com) wrote:

: In article <529col$v...@news.akula.com>, n...@akula.com (Stan Lobunets) wrote:
: >I was trying to log in to my ISP using minicom (for the first time). For some
: >reason everything was slow - I would type a command (eg. adtd 33...), and it
: >would take several seconds to appear on the console. I'm using RedHat 3.0.3,
: >and I'm very new to Linux. Thanks for any tips.

:
: To follow up on my own post, same happens in Seymor. Do I need to configure

: something? It feels like I'm connecting at 300bps. Thanks much.

The problem is flow-control. You need to enable hardware flow-control both
on the port, and under minicom. On my system, /etc/rc.d/rc.serial is:

--- /etc/rc.d/rc.serial
#!/bin/sh
/bin/setserial /dev/cua3 spd_hi irq 7
/bin/stty crtscts < /dev/cua3
---

The first command says "COM4, computer-modem rate = 57600b, use IRQ 7".
(You need to set computer-modem rate higher than the modem speed. Mine is a
28k8 and it works good. This is so when your modem does hardware
compression, you can still get all the data from the modem. Text,
apparently, can compress up to 4:1.

The second command says "use hardware flow-control on COM4"

In minicom, you need to configure it to use HW flow-control (rts-cts =
"ready to send, clear to send" : they're lines on the serial-port that say
"hang on a sec, okay go now" etc).

From minicom, use control-A then O. Select "serial port setup". Make sure
Baud/Par/Bits is set to a suitably high value (mine is actually 115200
because when I use minicom, I'm mostly doing text stuff). Hardware flow
control should be on, software flow control should be off.

(I don't know why I set the speed in /etc/rc.d/rc.serial : minicom and
uucico both reconfigure it. It works so I don't mess with it. The machine
never reboots anyway, so it doesn't matter :-)

HTH, Simon
--
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Simon Roberts : "All the taxes paid over a lifetime by the average
Linux - the choice of : American are spent by the government in less than a
a GNU generation : second" -- Jim Fiebig

Stan Lobunets

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Sep 27, 1996, 3:00:00 AM9/27/96

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In article <52fvu9$o...@airdmhor.gen.nz>, si...@airdmhor.gen.nz (Simon Roberts) wrote:
>Stan Lobunets (n...@akula.com) wrote:
>: In article <529col$v...@news.akula.com>, n...@akula.com (Stan Lobunets) wrote:
>: >I was trying to log in to my ISP using minicom (for the first time). For
> some
>: >reason everything was slow - I would type a command (eg. adtd 33...), and it
>
>: >would take several seconds to appear on the console. I'm using RedHat 3.0.3,

>The problem is flow-control. You need to enable hardware flow-control both

>on the port, and under minicom. On my system, /etc/rc.d/rc.serial is:

Thanks for the advice. I did change the default IRQ following someone's
suggestion, and that seemed to solve it somewhat. It wasn't slow anymore, but
every once in a while the transmission would freeze for a minute or so, then
start working again. I'll try enabling hardware flow-control next.