I'm trying to use the comms/birda package to sync my palm devices with
my Thinkpad 600 running 1.5.2 using IrDA.  The irs(1) man page says:

     To hotsync a palm over irda, use the following commands:
     irs -c -e -y /dev/ptyqf &
     pilot-xfer -p /dev/ttyqf -b backup-dir

But when I run 'irs -c -e -y /dev/ptyqf' as root, I get the following:

# irs -c -e -y /dev/ptyqf   
Cannot default the port!

I've sniffed around in the the source of birda a bit, and this message
is emitted when createSerialPort() fails.  createSerialPort()
ultimately calls open() repeated on files in /dev/.  Perhaps I need to
run MAKEDEV to have the right device files?  

Somewhere else on the Web, I found something that mentioned that IR
devices were added 1.5Z.  Is this correct; do I need to upgrade to
1.5Z?

-russ