tty000 troubles w/modem

[John Ruckstuhl]

I've freshly installed 3.51m and HDB on a 3b1 with a US Robotics 
Password 1200 baud modem on tty000.  The Password uses a subset of the
Hayes AT command set, and powers up in a no-echo mode (the command ATE1
will start the command echoing, and then it looks much like a Hayes).

The same hardware ran 3.51 and stock uucp without complaint (using a
slightly different modem definition in modemcap) for a couple of years.

Now, I am *most* frustrated.  
Uucico will not reliably talk to the modem.
It's as if tty000 gets clogged up, because sometimes it seems I can
clear the trouble (for exactly one test) by cycling power on the modem.

I almost always get 
    TIMEOUT (generic open)
    CONN FAILED (CAN'T ACCESS DEVICE)
in the logfile.  The exception is only sometimes, when the modem is
freshly powered up.

It sort of looks like the chat session defined in Dialers is failing,
because -x9 shows that I don't reach the point where I'm trying to chat
per script in Systems.  So then, I try to make the connection to the
modem a "direct" one and embed all the dialing and chatting in the
Systems chat script, so that it will show during uucico -x9, but it's
still failing earlier than that.

I've tried various inittab entries, but to no avail.  I don't accept
computer calls, so I figure I don't need a getty on tty000 and I'm not
now running one (but I got the same symptoms when I did run one).

Some System Administration guides suggest that one ought to be able to
do things like 
    echo "A" > /dev/tty000
but here, even root can't do that -- you hang, (working), until you
break out of it, then you get the error message:  
    /dev/tty000: cannot create
Or at least, I do.

Please help me understand this.  If you have time to help me, and think
that it would be more efficient to talk with me over the telephone while
I run experimental commands at the console, please email me your
telephone number and I will call you at your convenience.
I repeat, I am very frustrated.

Thank you,
ruck.
PS -- don't mail to sphere -- she's offline now (for obvious reasons).
-- 
John R Ruckstuhl, Jr			ruck at alpha.ee.ufl.edu
Dept of Electrical Engineering		ruck at cis.ufl.edu, uflorida!ruck
University of Florida			ruck%sphere at cis.ufl.edu, sphere!ruck