more serial port troubles

[Mike Wright]

Hi all,

Background:  I'm trying to debug a Xen setup and the hypervisor outputs 
its info via the com port.

This seems like it should be a cakewalk but I've been fighting this for 
almost a week now.

All I'm trying to do is dump output from one com port on one machine to 
the com port on a different machine.

I've tried simple cat a file to one com port and cat the other.  I've 
tried minicom ctrl-A S and ctrl-A R with zmodem in both directions for 
days without any success.

Yesterday I installed putty and selecting "serial" gets me nowhere, so 
for spits and giggles I chose "ssh" and entered the hostname of the 
target machine.  It asked for my login name, presented my key and, 
voilá, I'm logged into the remote machine.

That step alone verifies that com port hardware, flow rates and 
handshakes, and null modem cable all work.

Does anybody else have any clues here; I obviously don't :/

Thanks for any and all help,
Mike Wright