[ale] My modem is ignoring me

[Joe Bayes]

I feel so shunned. 

I hooked my modem up to my serial port, and double checked to make
sure I was using the serial port and not the parallel port (male
db25). I turned my modem on, fired up Kermit, double checked that my
device was set correctly, set my speed, then hit "c". 

Whatever I typed after this point, not only did my modem not receive
it, but the keystrokes didn't even echo on the screen. The
Serial-HOWTO said nothing about this problem, and a week on and off of
fiddling  with it produced no results. 

Please, please tell me what I can do to get my modem to start talking
to me again. I feel so lost, so...disconnected...without it. 

--joe