"add" a serial port

[EaglePoint]

I am using a 5 year old laptop with no serial ports on it (on Suse 9.2, and with PL2303). I use an obscure program on it to interface with geologic equipment. This equipment connects only through serial ports. I have tried a serial-to-USB converter, but to no avail. Looking at other computers with the program installed on it, it appears that the program looks for physical serial ports regardless of whether or not they even have something plugged in.

I have created a /udev rule to symbolically link /ttyUSB0 to /ttyS0 but that did not work, due to the afore mentioned lack of actual physical serial ports on the computer itself.

Question:
Is there a configuration file in SuSe that this program might be interfacing with to determine the existance of serial ports? I.e. can I trick SuSe into thinking it actually has a serial port on it?

[hans51]

I use suse linux since 1998,
my advice would be to upgrade to opensuse 11.4 (or at least 11.3)
all networking/communication, kernel and modules have heavily improved since your 9.2!

[EaglePoint]

Sorry, I meant I use SuSE 11.2.

The software I'm having the issue with does not compile under anything higher than 11.2, so upgrading is not an option. Thanks though.