g77 and Linux FIFO

["Jacek M. Holeczek" <holeczek at us dot edu dot pl>]

Hi,
I am porting some kind of a fortran package to Linux g77 (egcs-2.91.66,
19990314/Linux, egcs-1.1.2 release, RH6.1/i386).
One of shell scripts works the following way :
------------------------------------------------
...
mknod fort.30 p		# makes the fort.30 FIFO
producer &		# writes the fort.30 FIFO (started in backgroung)
consumer		# reads the fort.30 FIFO
...
------------------------------------------------
As you can see there are TWO fortran programs (called above the "producer"
and the "consumer") that communicate through a unix (RH6.1/i386 Linux)
FIFO. Both these programs use "fort.30" FIFO in "unformatted"
writes/reads. The problem is - as soon as they start I get :
------------------------------------------------
[1] 16488
sue: unformatted io not allowed
apparent state: unit 30 named fort.30
lately reading sequential unformatted external IO
Abort (core dumped)
sue: unformatted io not allowed
apparent state: unit 30 named fort.30
lately writing sequential unformatted external IO
[1]    Abort /.../ (core dumped)
------------------------------------------------
It seems for me that g77 fortran under Linux cannot use binary FIFOs ?
Or maybe Linux FIFOs are not allowed to use binary data ?
Could someone, please, tell me how can I convince these programs to
communicate through a Linux FIFO ? (Modifying all writes/reads to use
"formatted" IO is NOT an option).
Another problem here is - how can I get a "pclose" function to close the
"fort.30" ? Does anyone of you have a "pclose" written in fortran ?
Thanks in advance,
Jacek.