Solution to Problems with UUCP/modems.

[Carl S. Gutekunst]

>>We use our Quattro for both incoming and outgoing calls (using a version of
>>the "acucntrl" program).

>What is the "acucntrl" program, and where did you get it?

acucntrl is a little hack that comes with 4.3BSD. It is invoked by uucico when
it wants to make an outgoing call, to scribble on the tty data structures in
the kernel and keep init(8) from waking up. In other words, it provides dialin
and dialout on the same line.

Standard OSx does not provide acucntrl. The 4.3BSD version is highly VAX de-
pendent (what do you expect for a program that opens and writes on /dev/kmem?)
and needs a fair amount of hacking to make it work on a Pyramid. Several brave
souls have done this, including Romain Kang @ pyrnj and (apparently) someone
in New Zealand. Of course, 4.3BSD Tahoe has a port to the CCI Power 6/32.

Someday (*SIGH*) someone here will implement the Sun/Mt. Xinu fix that allows
real modem devices and provides portable goof-proof in/out calling. I've been
wanting to do that for some time. Unfortunately it is the kind of thing that
makes smaller existing customers happy, but isn't real meaningful to the large
customers who are buying machines tomorrow. So it has taken a back seat to
other development. :-( If, say, Southwest Bell (Hi Bruce!) were to threaten to
dump all their machines in the Mississippi if they didn't have dialin/dialout
capability, then it would get done tomorrow afternoon. :-)

<csg>