RE: [TCLUG:11008] Invisible mouse?

["Carl Patten" <cpatte@trimodalinc.com>]

The saga continues...

> Are there any good diagnostics we could try from within Linux?  As I
> mentioned earlier, gpmconfig's autodetect hangs (and then some),
> but if there
> are any serial port diagnostics out there, they'd probably be
> more directly
> informative than all this mucking about with Windows device settings.

Sure, we'll call the Windows stuff a red herring and move on.  In case you
don't already have it, here's a URL for a current Serial-HOWTO which goes
into excruciating detail regarding using and troubleshooting serial ports
under Linux: http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Serial-HOWTO.html .

It mentions modemstat, statserial, and serialmon as potential
troubleshooting tools.  Another thing it mentions is to use setserial to set
the IRQ to 0.  (This just turns on polling, it does NOT set the IRQ to the
same as the system timer!)  Lots of tricks here; if you haven't read it I
strongly recommend doing so.

stty -a < /dev/ttyS0 will tell you the speed of the COM1 port in Linux.
Every serial mouse I've used had this set to 1200.

You could also hook up an external modem and see what happens when you do
echo "ATA" > /dev/ttyS0.  It should make the modem answer.

Hope this keeps you going for a bit.  I'm starting to run out of ideas,
hence the suggestion to examine what the experts have written.  Also the
fact that Windows freaked when you removed the add-on serial card has me
worried about the general hardware.  I'm tempted to ask you to check the
grounding on the motherboard, but I'm also tempted to ask for a
sledgehammer. :)

--
Carl Patten