problems getting netra t1 to respond to minicom

[xanthapus]

i have a netra t1 200 i bought cheap off an auction and now i want to put gentoo on it.

after much fluffing around i've managed to get minicom to read from the lom plug but i dont seem to be able to send anything the other way

when i push ctrl-a minicom claims to be offline but is displaying the following
**********************************************

LOMlite starting up.

CPU type: H8/3437S, mode 3
Ram-test: 2048 bytes OK
Initialising i2c bus: OK
Searching for EEPROMs: 50(cfg)
I2c eeprom @50: OK
i2c bus speed code 01... OK
Probing for lm80s: 28
Initialising lm80 @28: OK
Probing for lm75s: none
System functions: PSUs fans breakers rails gpio temps host CLI ebus clock
Power restored

LOMlite console
lom>
LOM event: +0h0m0s LOM booted
lom>
LOM event: +0h0m0s host power on

Netra T1 200 (UltraSPARC-IIe 500MHz), No Keyboard
OpenBoot 4.0, 1024 MB memory installed, Serial #51095567.
Ethernet address 0:3:ba:b:a8:f, Host ID: 830ba80f.



Boot device: disk File and args:
SunOS Release 5.8 Version Generic_108528-14 64-bit
Copyright 1983-2001 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved.
WARNING: forceload of misc/md_trans failed
WARNING: forceload of misc/md_hotspares failed
configuring IPv4 interfaces: eri0.
Hostname: wellwiseo1
metainit: wellwiseo1: stale databases

Insufficient metadevice database replicas located.

Use metadb to delete databases which are broken.
Ignore any "Read-only file system" error messages.
Reboot the system when finished to reload the metadevice database. After reboot, repair any broken database replicas which were deleted.

Type control-d to proceed with normal startup,
(or give root password for system maintenance):

*************************************************

however all my keyboard action seems to be completely ignored, if i type some random guff in response to the final prompt nothing happens (i would at least expect it to tell me to piss off) and i can issue breaks (ctrl-A F) as much as i like during startup with absolutely no effect.

I concluded i must have screwed my minicom configuration somehow, and tryed hyperterminal from windows, but again i seem to have only one way communication going on.

does anyone have any idea where i'm going wrong?