[CentOS] syslog to serial term spits out garbage

Mon Aug 7 17:34:34 UTC 2006
SoNicX <sonicx_ at gmx.net>

hello,
i have wired myself a nullmodemcable to connect a small machine to my 
centos-ltsp-and-so-on-server. using agetty i can login fine, just a few 
garbage chars here and there but working is ok. now this isnt what i wanted, 
so i disabled agetty, made a line in syslog.conf like
*.* /dev/ttyS0
and made the system produce a lockfile after syslog is started to lock that 
serial port. now data reaches my minicom using terminal emulator, but its 
garbage, looking like this:
...x.x.x at ..x.x. 
and so on. if i do
echo "somechar" > /dev/ttyS0
its the same garbage. im sure this is a quite simple thing, but i dont get it 
to work. do i need another terminal prog if i try to send plaintext with 
syslog (as it seems to me clueless as i am). do i need to manipulate syslog 
output somehow? i tried to fiddle around with setserial but the port should 
work, as they to with agetty. i hope someone on this list has experience with 
this, doenst seem to be too popular.
mfg
sonicx