Ye Olde serial driver crash - Sys V/AT/2.4

[Mark E. Mallett]

A month or two ago, I mentioned that I couldn't tell, after upgrading
from System V/AT 2.3 to 2.4, whether the infamous serial driver bug
was still present.  The reason was that I had to keep rebooting,
myself, because of the NEW keyboard bug (those who blame the hardware
are ignoring the fact that it worked fine under 2.3).  Now that I've
gotten used to avoiding control-s and control-q, I can safely report
that the serial driver problem has not gone away.  It is now, on my
system at least, far worse.

With 2.3 the crash intervals were measured in weeks.  Now, I don't
wonder is not whether my system will crash on any given day -- I take
that for granted.  The question is: how many times?  The average seems
to be 2 or greater.

I have to assume after several years that Microport does not have the
desire (or perhaps the ability) to fix this problem.  Me, I don't want
to spend money on different software for a 286 system that's going to
be outmoded soon (if it isn't already).

Can anyone offer solutions?  Is there a third-party serial driver
available (PD, free, or commercial)?  Am I wrong in thinking that the
driver is at fault, is it perhaps impossible to write a fault-free
serial driver for Sys V/AT; would it be pointless to try to write one?

Yours,
-mm-
-- 
Mark E. Mallett  Zinn Computer Co/ PO Box 4188/ Manchester NH/ 03103 
Bus. Phone: 603 645 5069    Home: 603 424 8129     BIX: mmallett
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Northern MA and Southern NH consultants:  Ask me about MV.COM