@dpsi:
@fmaxwell:
@jimp:
The boot menu with safe mode was shown in your serial output, just power cycle it, and at that menu hit: 6, then 4, then backspace, then 1
It's shown, but the keyboard input isn't accepted over a serial port. That threw me off for a long time when I first set it up some years earlier.
Sounds like your TX is not wired correctly over your serial cable.
Realized I'd made a mistake in describing. When in the BIOS, which can redirect to serial (as shown), you still need a keyboard connected to a USB port. Once pfSense has booted, the serial-in does work.
I'm in the middle of rebuilding my server, which I had a VMWare image of, allowing me to run it virtually while the hardware is down. I'll get back to the pfSense mess later – probably after I buy new hardware.