Awesome, I knew I was doing something wrong. I had assumed that the precompiled hijack kernels included all the irda stuff, but I guess that they don't. I compiled my own kernel, and now I get discovery from my Palm and my laptop.

If I set up my Palm to hotsync via IrCOMM, and cat /dev/ircomm0 while I am doing it, I get junk output while the Palm tries to negotiate a connection with the empeg, so I'm assuming that means that /dev/ircomm0 is working.

If I do not enable discovery (the echo 1 >/proc/sys/net/irda/disovery business) I can still use IrCOMM, right? The Palm sync'ing still gives the same output anyway. Discovery is just to alert other devices in the area that an IR capable device is present, right? If you do not enable discovery, you are still able to use IrDA, correct?