Serial/Parallel conflicts

[Ross Boylan <RossBoylan@stanfordalumni.org>]

I've had some success with the problems reported earlier, but seem to
have created a new problem.

I went into the BIOS and changed the settings for the serial ports
from "AUTO" to 
Port A: 3f8/com1
Port B: 2f8/com2
My hope was that by setting COM2 to 2f8 explicitly I would get rid of
the "LSR safety check" warning on ttyS1.

As a result, the messages when I started up went from:
Jan 19 10:30:05 wheat kernel: ttyS00 at 0x03f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
Jan 19 10:30:05 wheat kernel: ttyS02 at 0x03e8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
Jan 19 10:30:05 wheat kernel: ttyS01 at port 0x02f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550A

to:
Jan 29 05:47:49 wheat kernel: ttyS00 at 0x03f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
Jan 29 05:47:49 wheat kernel: ttyS01 at 0x02f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550A
Jan 29 05:47:49 wheat kernel: ttyS02 at port 0x03e8 (irq = 5) is a 16550A
and I no longer got the "LSR safety check engaged" message.  (Note
also the change in order of the reports).

Unfortunately, my parallel port stopped working:
Jan 29 08:45:12 wheat kernel: lp: driver loaded but no devices found


I notice that if I do not pick auto for the parallel port, I am given
a manual choice of IRQ 5 or 7 for it.  7 is used by my soundcard, and
as noted above, 5 is being used by ttyS02 (modem).

I set my BIOS back to AUTO for all ports, but I still see the second
configuration reported above.  This has not reverted things to their
previous state.  I can think of 3 possible reasons:
1. the hardware is saving state
2. the hardware is saving state because I rebooted without powering
off
3. Linux is saving state.

So I have several questions.
What is going on?
How can I get my printer (LPT1) back?
Is there any way I can make all my devices happy (i.e, no LSR safety
check for the serial ports and working parallel port)?

I have an AMIBIOS with a setting of "Non-PNP OS".  2.4.19 kernel.

Thanks.