> When I fire up minicom it gives me an error of tty00 locked.. Ive done 
> everyhting I could think of and its still occuring...

Check out /var/spool/lock. If there's a file with tty00 in its name, delete
it. Then things should work.

I'm assuming you've rebooted. The contents of this file should be the PID
(process ID) that has locked the tty. As long as it's not still running,
you're fine.

Take care,

Bill