blymn_at_baesystems.com.au said:
> One thing, do both you have your connection set to strong? i.e. do a
> "cfs strong" before you try the check out. 

I've tried it and got different problems. cvs complained
cvs update: cannot rewrite CVS/Entries.Backup: Interrupted system call
a number of times, and after a while there was no visible progress
anymore.
The venus console messages were like

11:14:32 Volume coda.root busy, waiting
11:14:44 DispatchWorker: signal received (seq = 229915)
11:14:44 Volume coda.root busy, waiting
[...]
11:15:44 Volume coda.root busy, waiting
11:15:49 MaxWouldBlock exceeded...returning EWOULDBLOCK
11:15:49 worker::Return: message write error 3 (op = 11, seq = 229915), wrote 
-1 of 12 bytes
11:15:59 Volume coda.root busy, waiting

best regards
Matthias