[Techtalk] minicom won't talk to powered on device

[Hamster]

Hi,

I'm having terrible woes trying to use minicom to manage some switches
and routers. I can't get a connection to a powered on device.

I started minicom as root with the -s option, and have saved a config
file with all the right comms settings - 9600N81 and /dev/ttyS0. I saved
that as s0, and so now launch minicom (as normal user) using `minicom -o
s0`.

If I perform the following steps in this order, I get a perfectly
working connection to the device:
1. start minicom 
2. plug in the console cable into the device
3. power on the device

However, if I want to use minicom to connect to something that is
already powered on, it simply refuses to connect. The status bar down
the bottom of the screen just says "offline" and no amount of pressing
enter or anything at all will get me a working connection.

It doesn't really need to be said that I can't keep power cycling a
device just to get a console connection!!

Has anyone seen this behaviour before? Better yet, does anyone know what
I'm doing wrong?

Someone suggested trying seyon instead of minicom, but I had no luck at
all getting that programme to work! 

If possible, I'd like to work out why minicom won't behave for me.

Thanks!

H.