Thanks for all the help. I guess while upgrading from Perl version 5.8.8 to 5.10.0 on that particular machine, I must have upset the fine balance of buffering. I upgraded the Linux distro I was using and it was an effective workaround. Since the system I was controlling was something that I could not change, changing the baud rate or introducing handshaking could not be tried as options. All other options on the controlling system did not help. But for now I should be ok. Thanks once again