am trying to connect my laptop to RHEL WS4 box using serial console

I tried with minicom, the problem was I am not getting any login prompt from my laptop HyperTerminal
am not sure about the my HyperTerminal setting in my laptop witch is windows 95 workstation

the minicom settings I took from redhat site

HyperTerminal setting

bit per second 9600
date bit 8
parity none
stop bits 1
Flow control Hardware/none (tried both)

Does /etc/inittab on the host have an entry like:
T0:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty -L ttyS0 38400 vt100

yes................

The entry is pointing to the correct serial port and you are using a crossover cable?
Sorry if I am only asking what you already know. I understood your OP to say you were not connecting with either Minicom or Hyperteminal so I am starting from square one.

EDIT: You can also try the "screen" program to connect from Linux.
screen /dev/ttyS0 115200

I am sorry about my last reply entry is like this

7:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty ttyS0 38400 vt100

because I don't find any /sbin/getty in my box

I am using a 9 pin serial cable both ends are alike

note: sometimes I was able connect through minicom but no login prompt provided from hyper terminal can't see anything
but if I type something in the HyperTerminal it will appear in the minicom screen

Take a look here.
Any entries about serial connections may be further down.

am going through your URL just tell me is this entry will work or not

T0:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -L ttyS0 38400 vt100

Looks like that or a variation should work.Sorry to redirect you to more articles.
Red Hat and agetty could be slightly different than the Debian and getty I am used to.
As you see there are slightly different suggestions in the different articles for agetty. There should be enough info to help you try a couple if one does not work.
This makes me wonder about your setup.
For the serial connection the computer you are adding the getty line to will be the "server" and you do not open a terminal emulator on it. You do open the emulator on the computer you are using as a "client". It seems you are trying to have the two terminal emulators "talk to each other". AFAIK that is not correct.
If your laptop runs only Windows 95 you would use Hyperterminal or any prefered terminal emulator to connect to the Red Hat "serial server" when the login getty is working.

anyway I was able to connect to server from serial console through adding following entry in inittab

eg:- 7:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty ttyS0 38400 vt100

how can I save and exit from vi editor after used it ( getting ":" is a problem ) in serial console