RS-232 access under MS/DOS on 386i?

[Christopher G. Chute, M.D.]

I am the happy owner of a SUN386i, linked to the rest of the world via
UUCP.  (For those few who might care, I am generally very pleased.)  My
RS-232 port has a modem hanging off of it, and a getty running on that
port.

I have several MS/DOS programs which I find more useful if they can
address the modem, to dial the phone from my MS/DOS rolodex program for
example.  This application is in MS/DOS, not Sunview, so that my secretary
can maintain it on her PS/2 (also integrates with WordPerfect more nicely
for my secretary).

The problem is that I seem to have lost access to my MS/DOS RS-232 port
when I brought UUCP up on my machine.  I guess the device cannot be
shared.  How then do I let my poor MS/DOS applications get at the modem
which is typically available for UUCP.  I would prefer not to have to buy
another RS-232 card and modem, just to dial the phone from my rolodex.  It
seems to me that one modem should be enough for this humble resource
sharing.  Below is the line from my setup.pc file about the com port:

COM1                    /etc/dos/defaults/com1

which is a symbolic link to /dev/ttya.  This port is active as evidenced by:

20147 ?  I     0:00 - D2400 ttya (getty).

While I am cluttering the Usenet bandwidth, how can I force sendmail to
simulate my return path via Internet (where I am properly aliased) rather
than via UUCP (where I have no site declaration).  The reality is that I
originate and receive a short UUCP loop to our network based machine,
which handle things from there, but return paths are almost always
chute at medinf.uucp which does not exist.

Yours in relative computer illiteracy,
Chris Chute, MD				Mayo Clinic
chute at mayo.edu				Section of Medical Information Resources
(507)284-5506				Rochester, MN 55905