serial port on laptop

[Matthieu Paindavoine <mpaindav@arinc.com>]

Hello,

I am a little bit puzzled by the serial port on my laptop.

When I run setserial -g /dev/ttyS0, it seems to recognize the UART, the
IRQ, and all that.

when I run statserial, it recognizes the serial port on the pcmcia card
(/dev/ttyS1).
If I force statserial on /dev/ttyS0, it gives me a 
'TIOCMGET failed: I/O error'

Looking at the dmesg, there is no trace of ttyS0, just the tty01 when I
insert the pcmcia modem.

I would like to know if the kernel has recognized a serial port (not the
pcmcia one), how it is configured, and also what the TIOCMGET error
means.

Ultimately, I would like to use it for a VT520 Text Terminal, but this
seem so far away. I am trying to find my way out of the Serial-Howto.

Thanks for any guidance.

Matthieu