Microport System V/AT help request

[Steve Neighorn]

In article <183 at vsedev.VSE.COM> ron at vsedev.VSE.COM (Ron Flax) writes:
>I have had a similar problem, when I do a Ctl-Alt-Del on my BELL
>Technologies MPE (PC-AT Clone) it says 'system will be rebooted...' or
>whatever, then just sits there looking dumb as if to say what next
>boss?  I then have to reset the computer by hitting the reset button.
>Not too much of a problem although I suspect that the powerfail
>routines and/or autobooting will fail if I am not there to kick the
>computer...  Microport are you listening?

I too use SYSTEM V/AT on a 'Can Intel Really Go This Fast?' clone, and on
my first go around with the unix, I had the same problems as you and others
have written about regarding Microport's 'hardened' I/O. But with the release
of the 1.36 kernel, the problems have gone away. Apparently, in the latest
release, the hardened became more hardened. When I press cntrl-alt-del, my
disk-active light shines for a few moments, then the system prints a reboot
message. Now this works fine and good, but it still is a bit scary, so I
usually stick with a sync;sync;sync;init 0 script to bring the system
down. It takes a bit longer but it is what I am used to, and it's nice to
get the wall messages.

Now if I could only figure out how to get my printer working. I have a
Star NB-15, which works beautifully at 300 cps draft in PCDOS, but as soon
as I boot into V/AT, the printer ready lights go out. I have run the
advanced diags over my machine overnight; I have tried three different
printer cables, I have reconfigured with lpadmin a dozen times, but I get
the same frustrating results. Lpstat says everything is AOK. Lp sends me
mail that says the file was printed. The printer remains a several hundred
dollar paperweight as long as I am in unix. Right now I am copying files to
a PCDOS disk and then printing them off with a PCDOS text formatter, which
isn't as nearly as nice as the V/AT text-processing utilities. Does anyone
out there have V/AT *and* their printers working?



-- 
Steven C. Neighorn               tektronix!reed!percival!qiclabs!neighorn
Portland Public Schools      "Where we train young Star Fighters to defend the
(503) 249-2000 ext 229           frontier against Xur and the Ko-dan Armada"