I've been using an old, second mac as my serial console to run macbsd on
my pb170. I recently got an old 286 for free, and I'd like to use
it as a dedicated serial console. So, after replacing a bad floppy
cable and grabbing some free PC comm programs off the net, I tried it
out, using a program called Qtalk on the 286 as a terminal emulator.
The serial console, multiuser boot seems to go normally until just
after the security level is changed from 0 to 1. The next few lines
of output on the console are partly garbled, into a mixture of strange
characters and English. Netbsd seems to think all is well as I can
still login, ls, sync, and shutdown, though everything on the console
is mostly garbled.

Any ideas? I imagine it's a problem with the PC comm program, but how
to solve it?

Thanks for any advice,

Brian