Greetings folks shamefacedly, I will admit I have no idea what I was doing, and was thus---doing it wrong.
removing CONFIG_SERIAL from the kernel config fixes the problem. Turns out arch/ppc/8xx_io/uart.c registers the serial device and later drivers/char/serial.c registers the same device, and thus nothing works. Thanks for the hints that I did receive. Ben -- Benjamin Collar Siemens AG CT SE 2 Embedded Linux 089-636-53711
