Fourport serial PCI card I/O ports disabled
 

My Lava Quattro-PCI 3.3V card worked fine with Kernel 2.6.9 (CentOS 4.5) but quit when I upgraded (idiot!!) to version 5.0, kernel 2.6.18. (CentOS 5.0 is the free distro of Redhat Enterprise Linux 5.0)

The box is a Dell Poweredge 2850

At first it wasn't setting up ttyS4-7, I added '8250.nr_uarts=8' to the kernel line in /boot/grub/grub.conf to fix that. Now lspci -v says:

0a:02.0 Serial controller: Lava Computer mfg Inc Quattro-PCI A (prog-if 02 [16550])
Subsystem: Lava Computer mfg Inc Quattro-PCI A
Flags: slow devsel, IRQ 177
I/O ports at cc00 [disabled] [size=256]
I/O ports at c800 [disabled] [size=256]

0a:02.1 Serial controller: Lava Computer mfg Inc Quattro-PCI B (prog-if 02 [16550])
Subsystem: Lava Computer mfg Inc Quattro-PCI B
Flags: slow devsel, IRQ 177
I/O ports at c400 [disabled] [size=256]
I/O ports at c000 [disabled] [size=256]


Relevant stuff from dmesg:

Linux agpgart interface v0.101 (c) Dave Jones
Serial: 8250/16550 driver $Revision: 1.90 $ 8 ports, IRQ sharing enabled
serial8250: ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
00:08: ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:0a:02.0[A] -> GSI 96 (level, low) -> IRQ 177
ACPI: PCI interrupt for device 0000:0a:02.0 disabled
PCI: Enabling device 0000:0a:02.1 (0040 -> 0041)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:0a:02.1[A] -> GSI 96 (level, low) -> IRQ 177
ACPI: PCI interrupt for device 0000:0a:02.1 disabled

Why is it disabling the thing? Is there something I can to do enable the interrupt and/or I/O ports?

I run setserial like this (in an rc script)

setserial /dev/ttyS4 port 0xc000 irq 177 uart 16550a baud_base 115200 ^fourport

Any help you could offer would be wonderful!

Brad Nelson, b@n1.ca

I have done enough serial stuff to know that my knowledge only includes what I have worked with.
I have run an 8 port Digiboard and when that failed and 8 port Byterunner with, first Debian Woody, then Sarge. The Byterunner has proved to be an excellent multiport serial board BTW.
Having the correct devices in /dev and the correct entries in /etc/inittab is all I needed for serial connections to terminals. The Digiboard was a PITA because it was my first experience with multiport boards and required it's own driver. The Byterunner only needed devices created for it.
What is the actual purpose of the serial ports? Serial terminal connections, modems, other?