[SOLVED] RC --- inoperative serialports, including USB

The ports are seen, setserial does the usual and reports normally, just can't seem to do anything with them, minicom, or using TunerStudio (Java pgm, uses rxtx lib)
Been doing this since ~93 so this has me a bit stumped, does the same as root, serial ports basically deaf, and I'm out of ideas. machine has worked fine since 2007.0 was new, and still does with Mageia1.
(Itronix Gobook3)
Have a 16550a onboard and a USB Microconnectors dual that has been supported since kernel 2.3.
Does anyone else use serial ports anymore?
Everything else seems to work/look great, on install just the usual video card stuff (start with "3" as an argument, fiddle with XFdrake or load a working xorg.conf before telinit 5) and having to do "clocksource=jiffies" to prevent stalls on startup/shutdown.
Been doing this since ~93 so this has me a bit stumped, does the same as root, serial ports basically deaf, and I'm out of ideas. machine has worked fine since 2007.0 was new, and still does with Mageia1.
(Itronix Gobook3)
Have a 16550a onboard and a USB Microconnectors dual that has been supported since kernel 2.3.
Does anyone else use serial ports anymore?
Everything else seems to work/look great, on install just the usual video card stuff (start with "3" as an argument, fiddle with XFdrake or load a working xorg.conf before telinit 5) and having to do "clocksource=jiffies" to prevent stalls on startup/shutdown.