qemu serial device

I had massive trouble getting additional serial devices recognized by my kernel because for some very stupid reason (including me possibly being even stupider): the serial devices are attached as ISA devices by default. 

Yes, when you add the "-serial stdio" or something similar the serial device is on an ISA bus instead of the ultra-modern PCI. I have not verified this for myself but read here. Also I have verified that if I add the serial character device as a PCI device it magically is detected by the kernel.

As I am basing my kernel in multi_v7_defconfig, I cannot even find CONFIG_ISA in the menuconfig kernel configuration tool. I did not venture into manually adding it to the .config, as when the menuconfig does not show me love, i learned to be a gentleman. Also do not forget to add the serial driver, usable by QEMU, if you are building your own kernel .config. The relevant fragment is:

CONFIG_SERIAL_8250=y
CONFIG_SERIAL_8250_DEPRECATED_OPTIONS=y
# CONFIG_SERIAL_8250_PCI=y
CONFIG_SERIAL_8250_EXAR=y
CONFIG_SERIAL_8250_NR_UARTS=4
CONFIG_SERIAL_8250_RUNTIME_UARTS=4
# CONFIG_SERIAL_OF_PLATFORM=y

To run 'serial for tcp' but with a pci-serial I found this explanation.
 -chardev socket,host=127.0.0.1,port=59715,id=hostserial      -device pci-serial,chardev=hostserial