Question about sio

[Joshua Scoggins]

Hello,

I was reading up on what was still needed to be done to get FreeBSD 
working on IA64 and it said that syscons and sio were the last vestiges 
needed to be ported fully to ia64. While I understand what syscons does, 
I am confused on what sio does even after reading the man page on the 
website. I understand that it handles a serial controller but I am 
confused on why it is so critical even though its possible to log into 
the machine through a serial line.

Thank you in advance,

-Joshua Scoggins