Minicom Connection Over Serial Port To PIC18F452 Device

[Robert L Cochran]

I'm trying to use minicom on Fedora Core 4 to speak to a PIC18F452 chip 
which contains a preloaded version of the Microchip TCP/IP stack. I 
built the device myself from a kit; it is intended to be a small web 
server. My objective is to assign an IP address to the RTL9019AS 
ethernet controller. This can be accomplished over a setup menu that 
appears in the minicom window. I suspect I have incorrect minicom settings.

Serial device -- /dev/TTYS0 connected to development board Max232 chip

setup for 19200 bps,8N1, software flow control, VT102 emulation

iptables service is stopped

When I connect, the setup program appears. It is just a menu with 8 
choices. In fact, the setup menu sometimes displays itself twice.

I select an option say 2 to set the IP address. The device very 
sensibily responds with the default ip address. I type in a new IP 
address to reflect my actual network.

If I try to select 2 to check the default IP address, it again sensibly 
responds with the new IP address that I just gave it. So far, so good.

Then I select the option to save the new IP address. a message is 
returned which is usually the new IP address itself.

Attempts to ping that IP address fail.

Then I start the setup menu again in a new minicom window. The original 
-- default -- IP address appears.

So it seems like the option to save the IP address isn't working right. 
Things are apparently lost when I restart the device.

Is this a minicom software issue, or is it bad soldering on my part with 
the actual device being tested? I'm quite willing to agree it may have 
soldering issues.

Thanks

Bob Cochran