Serial Console on COM2 trouble

[Yang Xiao]

Hi list,
I'm trying to setup serial console on COM2 on a FC2 box,
the console was on ttyS0 until I had trouble trying to get a fax modem
to work on ttyS1, then I moved the modem to ttyS0 and it works fine,
and ttyS1 is the console now.
now, the problem, I can see the very first BIOS line but all garbage
after that, no login prompt either.
The process table show agetty is running on ttyS1 as well.

I think the problem might be the machine is not seeing COM2?
output from setserial -a /dev/ttyS1

/dev/ttyS1, Line 1, UART: unknown, Port: 0x02f8, IRQ: 3
        Baud_base: 115200, close_delay: 500, divisor: 0
        closing_wait: 30000
        Flags: spd_normal skip_test auto_irq

I have tried to set the port manually by 
/sbin/setserial /dev/ttyS1 irq 3 uart 16550A  skip_test
but it didn't do anything.

The /etc/inittab entry for serial console :
s1:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -L -f /etc/issueserial 38400 ttyS1 vt100

and I get this error in the messages file
"init: Id "s1" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes"

but if it's not working at all, why I was able to see the BIOS line?
Please help.

Yang