Sorry, Guess I didn't explain that too well. It was emptool that would not connect thru the serial port. I had to boot to NT in order to change the ip address. Back in linux emptool would connect thru ethernet but not thru serial.

I've never had to configure the serial port characteristics and it took me a while to figure out what to do. I tried lots of different parameters for stty and could not get it right.

Finally someone pointed out that since minicom would connect, I could look at the serial port settings while minimcom was connected and just set the port the same way.

That was how I got emptool to connect thru the serial port. Perhaps I didnt explain that too. Hope it does help someone else though