On Wed, Feb 07, 2001 at 07:27:08PM -0700, Mike Starke wrote:
> I may have asked this before, but I'm not sure
> if I got anything out of it..........
> 
> I have a phone system to which I have a line
> attached to com1 on one of my debian boxes. 
> Once I set the baud, blah, blah, I can open
> minicom and capture the input from this port
> to a file. Problem is, minicom will only
> write to the file once a buffer is filled.
> 
> What I would really like is some simple command
> line that can read the input and I can redirect
> this to a file.
> 
> Anyone have any tips here?

Try:
   tail -f /dev/ttyS0 > file

It seems to read and write data unbuffered.

-Mike