1. There are no "multiple swap spaces", /tmp and /system/volatile are using the same back-end which is your system virtual memory which size is around 243 GB and essentially made of RAM (minus 4GB)....
The problem is,
a classic terminal, when it is in a classic terminal application, and when you reboot, still thinks that you are in the terminal application. And you have problems to run shell...
You are getting "continue, sync, reset?" because the Solaris system has seen a 'break' signal. So, yes, this is caused by the cable you are using and perhaps it's not the correct one.