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Minicom Calling a Procomm Host

From WELLSCARGO on Mon, 12 Jul 1999

James,

I am new to linux but very familiar with dos and windows. I use procomm quite a bit for BBS conections. I am running a procomm host at work (ansi) that displays extended ascii characters on the front page (972-641-8069). When I log on with procomm everything looks ok but when I log on with minicom the characters are messed up. I have everything set correctly as far as I can tell. Any suggestion would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks, Don Wells

Are you sure you've set minicom to be an ANSI terminal? It defaults to VT102. Try [Ctrl]+[A], [T], [A] to toggle the emulation mode.

If the problem is stemming from the HASCII (high ASCII) line characters, first make sure you've set the line to be eight bit clean with a command like: stty cs8 < /dev/modem (note: you really redirect the INPUT of the stty command from your serial device --- it has to do with how it does its ioctl() calls).

After that I'd wonder on how you'd set your console character set. Are you doing this from a console or from an xterm? I'd try it from the console ([Ctrl]+[Alt]+[Fx] to switch out of a X Windows system to a virtual console, or VC as we call them in Linux. Once your at any VC you can just use the [Alt]+[Fx] function key combos to move among your VCs, and usually [Alt]+[F7] will get you back to the VC on which your first X Windows session is running).

I'd also suggest taking a look at CKermit. It's license doesn't allow the major Linux distributors to include it on their CDs, but it is a pretty good package for accessing modems under Linux. Note that CKermit doesn't provide terminal emulation under UNIX --- it (rightly) assumes that you ALREADY HAVE a terminal emulator through which you are talking to the system. So CKermit just passes data from the modem to your existing terminal (be it your console, telnet, xterm or whatever).

Copyright © 1999, James T. Dennis
Published in The Linux Gazette Issue 44 August 1999

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