This note is a quickie on getting minicom to talk to a standard Cisco device.
After installing Minicom on Debian through
apt-get install minicom
Configure Minicom with
minicom -s
In serial port setup, more than likely the device needs to be changed from /dev/ttyS1 to /dev/ttyS0. Bps should be 9600 8N1, and hardware flow control should be turned off.
Save the settings as dfl (default), and 'Exit from Minicom', else the modem initialization stuff will take over.
Startup Minicom with
minicom -ow