> Now - what am I doing wrong???

How about flow control? Try disable flow control on whatever it is
you're connecting to the ports? I don't know what getty uses by
default, but if you have complete cables I suppose it would be logical
to do RTS/CTS, but most terminals are configured for XON/XOFF.

-- 
Jonas - http://poledra.coyote.org:8080/~jonas/