>I have a pretty strange problem where the com ports appear to 
>be in the wrong state after reboot.  I notice this because the mouse
>probe done from MS-DOS fails and then probes my modem...
>A hard reboot fixes it.

I've seen this for a long time.  I believe it's caused by NetBSD turning
on the 16550 FIFO, and the BIOS not having a strong probe routine.  A hard
reset turns off the FIFO, and the BIOS then can detect the 16550 correctly.

I suppose the only real fix would be to have NetBSD turn off the FIFO
on shutdown.

--Ken