Well, no wonder i couldnt do anything - my ftdi was broken. I got another and everything is working as intended.
Well there is always that... I guess we all have to have a tester around just in case, tho i'm not sure how that would work with the usb variant the plain serial version is easy to test. Of course there is always the "dumb" serial to usb adapter which can be separate from a "dumb" serial to lan port.
Glad it worked for you in the end.