I looked at the latest com driver changes, and noticed that the com
driver now polls for input every softclock() when there are one or more
serial devices opened. I guess this might bring things closer
to a better performance while keeping the changes local to com.c.

However, it looks a bit ugly and a waste of cycles to me, for example
if you're running a getty on a serial port, it just sits there
and does nothing, but still compoll() gets called every softclock().

I haven't tested the changed driver yet, so I can't say anything
about its performance. I'm currently running with some patches
that my brother Onno did, using a fast-interrupt scheme, they work
just fine.

Anyway, are these changes meant to be a stopgap until a better
solution is found, or are they here to stay?

- Frank