Workstation to PC via serial port?

[David Beeman]

I have some questions related to the use of serial ports on unix
workstations which I'm hoping someone can answer.  The machine in question
is a DECStation 5000, although I suspect that the answers are probably
generally applicable.  (If others are interested, I'll post a summary of
answers to the net.)

There are a number of public domain programs of the x/y/zmodem variety which
I'd like to use to transfer data from the workstation to a PC via the serial
port.  (This would be a direct connection to a laptop, not via a modem.)
I'm guessing that the two serial ports on the machine correspond to
/dev/tty00 and /dev/tty01.  (Does anyone know if this is so for the DS
5000?)  However, none of these programs seem to have any provision for
specifying the terminal device for I/O.  This makes me think that there is
probably something which I need to set up outside of the program.  The
default terminal device appears to be /dev/tty, which I'm told is the
pseudonym for the terminal window from which I'm running the file transfer
program.  How can I assign this to be one of the serial ports so that I can
send data to a serial port instead of the screen?

A related question is: If I wanted to run a terminal program on the PC and
use it to login to the workstation via a serial port, how would I set things
up on the workstation to allow this?  (This would be another solution to the
problem, as the PC would presumeably then be /dev/tty.)  If anyone out there
has successfully done this, I'd sure like to know some of the details.

If I were to call up another computer from a PC at home by modem and then
telnet to my workstation, does a file transfer program running on the
workstation know how to get the file to the PC?  If so, how does this come
about?

Any answers, partial answers, or hints pointing in the right direction (or
to the appropriate man pages) would be most appreciated.

Dave Beeman ----- dbeeman at dogstar.colorado.edu