I have been working on designing HW and have been using a Ubuntu
computer as a serial port terminal to dump debugging data out of the
microcontroller to the screen.

The default GtkTerm which you can get from the Add/Remove menu item is
very slow. It can not keep up with a 9600 baud data stream with no HW
handshaking. It appears to work at 19200 baud with HW handshaking, but
if you turn on HEX mode to show the data in hexadecimal it does not keep
up even with HW handshaking. The buffers overrun and it keeps spitting
data in a loop after the input stops.

cutecom was recommended and it works at much higher speeds with no
handshaking, but still can not keep up when you go to HEX mode with
handshaking. It also overruns the buffers and goes into a loop that
continues after the data has stopped.

minicom was also recommended and it can keep up at 115.2K with no
handshaking but does not have a HEX display mode.

We need a better serial Terminal Program. I would think that you should
not lose data if you have HW handshaking, no matter how the data is
displayed.

Kip
--
Kipton Moravec AE5IB .- . ..... .. -...

"Always do right; this will gratify some people and astonish the rest."
--Mark Twain



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On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 10:14 AM, Kipton Moravec <kip@kdream.com> wrote:
> We need a better serial Terminal Program. I would think that you should
> not lose data if you have HW handshaking, no matter how the data is
> displayed.
>
Are you certain the microcontroller is honoring HW handshaking? I
agree that you should not lose data if you have HW handshaking. Are
you certain that GtkTerm is configured to use HW handshaking? (I've
never used GtkTerm -- I've used Minicom quite extensively, but I've
never needed a real time hex dump.)

If you only need hex dumps once in a while, you could exit out of your
terminal program and try something like:

$ od -tx2 /dev/ttyS0

Finally, check your dmesg to see if there are any messages related to
buffer overflows, dropped interrupts, or something that just plain
smells. It might give you a pointer for where to look for more help
(especially if my lame tips don't help at all).

--wpd

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