>one wonders why the driver allows userland to fiddle with these
>bits if they are used by these devices ?  eg, the sparc doesn't
>let you have access to the ms/kbd serial configuration..

The biggest reason is that there's a motherboard with the same serial
chipset but which doesnt support any graphics options, and where all
these lines are for ttys.  There was even a widget for vaxes which
plugs into the `mouse/keyboard' lines and makes them available as tty
lines.     

does that answer the question?

We will do something  better for 1.4 with wscons.