lost characters in serial I/O

[Peter da Silva]

> We have an 11/70 running 2.8BSD, and are trying to send in data from
> a remote site that supports only a crude protocol.  The remote person
> logs into the 11/70, and types "cat > filename"...

I'd guess that you're using DEC serial cards, which are notoriously
flakey. A lot of them (no names come to mind) can only support better
than 300 baud for short bursts... that is, they can accept people's
typing but file transfer just fills their little silos and they crater.

If the device driver is trying to cover for this by throwing CPU cycles
at it, then strange things will start happening as the load goes up. First
file transfers will die, then you'll start losing characters from normal
typing... which seems to be what's happening.

I don't know of any solution except to go for a more accurately rated serial
card.