> Bit puzzled... any help or sugestions apreciated!

I always keep an RS232 tester on hand for this sort of thing... one of those
DB25 things with LED's on it.

Can you run an echoing program on one port and try to see what characters
get through and which ones don't? This can often shed light on a lot of
problems, especially parity oriented ones.

Worst case, you can try gutting a spare cable and wiring up only the minimal
ground/RD/TD pins. Having pinout diagrams really helps.

Also, be sure you have disabled parity everywhere... I was recently shocked
to discover the default /etc/remote on i386 for com0 has even parity enabled!

Todd Whitesel
toddpw @ best.com