I still don't know why it didn't work on the serial port. I plugged in the serial cradle to another serial port (luckily, I had two), and rm /dev/pilot, then ln -s /dev/ttyS1 /dev/pilot. When I started JPilot after that, I got a "press Hotsync now or kill nnnnnn" -- so I type "kill nnnnn" in a terminal window, and it is now synching. VERY slowly, though, a "slow sync."

I can muck about with this some more, but right now, this is the only serious flaw with this distribution. A big one, though.