SUMMARY: DS15 com port RMC stopped responding

From: Shaun.Racine@intier.com
Date: Wed Nov 23 2005 - 06:58:26 EST


Many thanks to respondents;

      Michael Bütow
      Jay Leafey
      Bluejay Adametz

Solution
=========

Plug com cable into a different Windows Server. Now works OK. So it was
not a DS15 problem at all.

Jay Leafey did ask about XON/XOFF, when I tried ctl-s, ctl-q the Powerterm
session toggled between hold and resume, it did not seem to pass this to
com port.
Bluejay Adametz asked about rebooting Windows server, this was not possible
due to server critical purpose.
Michael Bütow comments about video card driver are interesting, I will
store this for any similar future problem.

Original Question
===============
We have recently taken delivery of our first DS15. It is at a remote site.
I got local IT to connect a crossover serial cable to the com1 port and a
Windows server I can connect to using remote desktop; using PowerTerm on
the windows server.

All worked OK for a day, I could access the SRM console and RMC. But the
next day, half way through reading a man page, access over the com port
stopped.

I cannot even do the esc esc rmc sequence.

The DS15 has been powered down (power cable unplugged) and up again. I
talked local IT through setting console to graphics, running rmc and typing
clear port, to see if it corrected situation.

The com cable has been unplugged and re-inserted at both ends.

Does anyone have any ideas why it no longer responds over the serial cable?
I appreciate any and all ideas.

Responses
===========

Michael Bütow;

We have had issues with DS15 freezing up completely.

In our case, it found to be caused by the ATI Radeon graphics cards/driver
(I wonder if you also have such?), and fixed by an HP patch providing v1.2
of the Radeon graphics driver.

Maybe this could be the same problem...

Best regards,
Michael

===============

Jay Leafey;

Is it possible the port is in an XOFF-ed state? We used to see this
with serial terminals, somebody would accidentally hit control-S and
everything would freeze untill an XON (control-Q) was sent. If the port
was set to use XON/XOFF flow control (instead of or in addition to
hardware flow control) it could be a possibility.

============

Bluejay Adametz;

At the risk of being flippant, has the Windows server been rebooted?

To be a bit more constructive, it might be a useful diagnostic to connect
something else (laptop, or maybe a modem temporarily) to the RMC port and
see if it's working independently of the Windows server. That'll tell you
which direction to look.
- Bluejay Adametz



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