TIP(1M)

NAME
tip - serial port communication program

SYNOPSIS
tip [-vh] [-s serial-speed]
tip [--version, --help] [--speed serial-speed]

DESCRIPTION
Tip is a communication program that talks to a serial port. It's most likely useful for talking to a modem, like the more common programs kermit, minicom, or seyon, but, unlike those programs, it's not particularly sophisticated. With tip, you can connect to a serial port, talk to the serial port, use external programs to pump data through the serial port, and quit the program. When you start tip up, it gives a little blurb describing the serial port it's connected to and a brief how to get help message, then drops immediately into communicating with the serial port. If you want to do a command, you get into command mode by typing [enter]~, then the command. Tip understands the following commands:

q
Quit tip, leaving the serial line as is.

!
Escape to an interactive shell on the local machine. Exiting
    the shell returns you to tip.

C
Run a command, taking input and output from the serial device.

|
Run a command, taking input from the serial device and spitting
    output to your terminal.

$
Run a command, spitting output to the serial device.

c
Change your working directory on the local machine.  If you
    don't give a directory, tip will chdir to $HOME.

AUTHOR
David Parsons ( orc@pell.chi.il.us )

BUGS
None of the sophisticated features of the SunOS version of tip are available here. You have to know what serial line you want to talk to, and you have to know how to dial and hang up the phone if you're talking to a modem. Tip uses flock() to lock the serial device, instead of the traditional method of dropping lock files into /usr/spool/uucp, /var/spool/uucp, /var/spool/locks, or /var/lock.