No, you *don't* need to disable IrDA in the kernel. The IrDA in the kernel does *nothing* until you irattach it. The IrDA stack *does not drive any empeg devices* and so has no access to the IrDA transceiver on the front of the empeg until you manually attach it to the IR transceiver with irattach.

If the gnokii docs say to disable IrDA, simply don't do the irattach, and run gnokii on ttyS2 - this should work.

The empeg devices don't interfere with anything, and are not designed to work as modules as this is not applicable for the empeg - modules are more for "generic" kernels which will run on various types of hardware, not boxes with known & fixed hardware.

I think you're getting confused with /dev/ir (INPUT ONLY, buttons and IR) and the IrDA transceiver. These are totally different devices - they just happen to sit next to each other on the display board PCB. There are two IR receivers because consumer IR is modulated on a 38kHz carrier and IrDA isn't.

Hugo