SUMMARY: differences in serial ports between Ultra-1 and Sparc-4/5?

From: Erwin Fritz (efritz@glja.com)
Date: Wed Sep 16 1998 - 12:16:44 CDT


First, my apologies for taking so long to get a response out. It took until
today to find the problem. The original problem is at the end of this message.

First, the vendor of the software came in. After investigating for several
hours, he pointed the finger at the OS.

I couldn't find anything wrong with the system itself, so I reinstalled Solaris
2.5.1 from scratch. I didn't apply any patches (other than those installed
during the OS installation). Sure enough, the digitizer worked.

So, I began applying the patches in the 2.5.1_Recommended cluster pack, except I
applied them in groups of three. After applying each group, I tested the
digitizer. Doing this eventually led to the culprit.

Patch 103566-35 (OpenWindows 3.5.1: Xsun patch) is the problem. Once that patch
is in, my vendor's software (Auto-trol's Geostation) can't bind a socket.

I've installed all of the other recommended patches and things are okay now.

Thanks to Casper Dik and Stefan Ladage for their responses.

Erwin Fritz
UNIX/NT/LAN/DBA Guy
Gilbert Laustsen Jung Associates Ltd.
http://www.glja.com


attached mail follows:


I had a digitizer hooked up to a Sparc 5's serial port. The Sparc was running
SunOS 4.1.4. I changed that machine to an Ultra-1 using the Sun upgrade kit and
installed Solaris 2.5.1 on it. The 'uname -a' on the Ultra shows

'SunOS jupiter 5.5.1 Generic_103640-20 sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-1'

The machine has the recommended patch cluster and the y2000 patch cluster.

The problem is that the digitizer no longer works. The software we use
(Auto-trol's Geostation) doesn't see it on the port.

I consulted SunSolve. Infodoc 13541 shows how to set up a serial port for a
digitizer tablet. Basically, you remove the zsmon port monitor. That doesn't
make any difference.

Then, I hooked up the digitizer to a Sparc-4 running Solaris 2.5 (no patches).
It works right away! Now, zsmon IS running on the Sparc-4's port, so I
re-enabled it on the Ultra-1. Still no response.

Is there a difference in serial ports between the Sparc-4/5 architectures and
the Ultra-1? Has anyone else seen this problem?

Erwin Fritz
UNIX/NT/LAN/DBA Guy
Gilbert Laustsen Jung Associates Ltd.
http://www.glja.com



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