Steve wrote:
"Unless you know this can happen, you think the app has died"

Yes, that is my big gripe against hyperterminal - there is so much to go wrong just with Hyperterminal that you never really know whether the system you're actually trying to debug is really working or not!

This is particularly ironic, as the main reason for having it in Win9x et al is just to be able to type "AT" to check that you get "OK" back from an unknown modem!!