hi,

i had similar problems, but putting

stty status ^T

into my shell's startup file solved the issue. afaik eterm seems to use
^J as status character, which results in displaying status sometimes.
 
$ stty status ^J
$ ssh localhost
philipp@localhost's password: load: 0.29  cmd: ssh 342 [ttyin] 0.04u
0.04s 0% 1160k
^C
$ stty status ^T
$ ssh localhost
philipp@localhost's password:
Permission denied, please try again.
philipp@localhost's password:
^C
$ 

cu
Philipp