I cannot seem to figure out the problem with my serial port.
I am trying to get lirc working, and cannot seem to figure out how to get my serial port to handle everything correctly.

I am using /dev/ttyS0 and am sure that my receiver works, I am not positive on whether this is a serial port problem or not, but I think it is.

setserial -bg /dev/ttyS* returns:

/dev/ttyS0 at 0x03f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A

but I forced that in serial.conf. I load lirc_serial successfully. Though when I run "mode2" the lirc testing program, I get no response, so this could be an lirc problem or a serial port problem, any help narrowing it down would be greatly appreciated. thanks.

If you have a null modem cable, hook up another computer's serial port and see if you can establish a serial console to your Linux machine. You'll need to modify your kernel boot parameters to something like this:

kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.19-rc3.20061026 ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 vga=794 console=ttyS0,38400 console=tty0