serial communication

[Blaine Lee]

I am having trouble understanding how to control a serial port.  I am
communicating with a couple different devices on serial ports.  One of
the devices uses a protocal that does not end with a lf, therfore I
think I am having a problem with buffering.

On a side note, I cannot find documentation for termios on my Debian
linux system.  Would it help if I found it?

I have tried the following, but it locks up at the term.read.  I can
verify that there is data coming back, if I comment out the term.read
then do a 'cat /dev/ttyS0&' before starting this program.

import os

pendpath = "/dev/ttyS0"
os.system("stty -F " + pendpath + " 38400 raw -crtscts")
term=open(pendpath,"w+")

#misc configuration strings sent to device

while 1:
    term.write("\002Af\003\n") # request keyboard next buffer item
    str = term.read()
    print str
    i=i-1

term.close()

Thanks
Blaine