Not strictly a NetBSD question, but since I can't get the serial port in
my new PC work correctly, I can't debug my VMWare problems (kernel crashes)...

I recently got a new i386 PC and I'm running -current on it. I'm trying
to run VMWare on it, with poor success. I decided to try running with
serial console to get reliably to kernel debugger, but hit the wall there
too.

It appears that I only can send data to the PC, but it won't send anything
out. Does anyone have any idea what could be the cause of this, and is
there anything I can do to fix this.

Specifically, I connected a serial cable (not sure what kind exactly)
to my alpha's DB9 port and the other end to the PC. I ran tip on the
alpha and booted the PC, got into the boot menu, and typed
"consdev com0". Nothing happeend on the alpha. I tried lot's of things
and no output came. However, when I wrote "consdev pc" on the alpha,
the boot banner appeared back to PC's monitor.

I then tried TeraTerm on Windows. And indeed, data typed to tip from
alpha appeared on the PC, but not vice versa. I also tried connecting
the cable from the PC to another PC running NetBSD. Same effect (both
running tip): the new PC receives, but does not send. I also then
connected the alpha to the older PC: data goes both ways (so the cable
is OK).

Could there be some obscure BIOS or jumper option on the motherboard
(MSI KT4V) or is the serial port broken (or, are both serial ports
broken; they exhibit the same behaviour)?