I then rebooted the BeagleBone using the original Angstrom image and ran
echo 20 > /sys/kernel/debug/omap_mux/uart1_rxd
and
echo 0 > /sys/kernel/debug/omap_mux/uart1_txd
to configure the pins as described. I then ran minicom on /dev/ttyO1 but still did not see any loopbacked characters.
Could you advise on why this is not working? Where in the system are the serial ports initialized?