Digi TS8 serial console server funkiness

[ML <ml () kenweb org>]

Hopefully someone here has wrestled with serial server oddities and can 
shed some light on this...


I've got a serial console server made by Digi (TS8 PortServer) setup in 
a fairly vanilla mode:  9600-8-N-1....telnet to port 500X gets you to 
port X.  Setup for a vt100 terminal type. Other VTs I tried didn't seem 
to make a difference.

Problem is when attached to a Cisco switch I had laying around I get 
seemily random garble output when accessing the console of a remote 
Cisco device. (e.g. "show run" will get a few garbled lines halfway 
through, Holding down Enter will produce some garbled text every few lines).

When attached to a Juniper device everything appears normal.  The 
problem follows the port if I swap the Cisco device to the port the 
J-box was on.

Other issues I've noticed..cannot use arrow keys to search command buffer.

My Google-fu is failing me in coming up with the right name for the 
effect I'm seeing...

Thanks