Sorry ... here is the same patch but with the diff done
from the parent of the code hierarchy.

---------------------------------------------------
--- linux-2.4.7-ac3/drivers/char/serial.c_ORIG  Wed Aug  1 23:02:09 2001
+++ linux-2.4.7-ac3/drivers/char/serial.c       Wed Aug  1 23:11:01 2001
@@ -4852,10 +4852,13 @@

 MODULE_DEVICE_TABLE(pci, serial_pci_tbl);

+/* serial_pci_driver_name[] gets truncated to ""  if the pci probe fails */
+static char serial_pci_driver_name[] = "serial";
+
 static struct pci_driver serial_pci_driver = {
-       name:           "serial",
+       name:           serial_pci_driver_name,
        probe:          serial_init_one,
-       remove:        serial_remove_one,
+       remove:         serial_remove_one,
        id_table:       serial_pci_tbl,
 };
---------------------------------------------------

> Here is a patch to fix the serial driver so that its name
> appears in /proc/interrupts.  The bug was caused by code
> that was overwriting the string literal "serial" with "".
> gcc merges all the "serial" strings together into one, so
> the "serial" sent to irq_request() was being ""ed as a
> side-effect.
> 
> Here is the patch to 2.4.7-ac3 both inline and attached.
> // Thomas Hood  <jdthood_AT_yahoo.co.uk>