lirc - irda - consumer IR - compaq laptop - help / howto

So I got the Compaq Presario v5305wm laptop. The spec *** says it has 1
Consumer IR on it. And I seem to have it setup, but it's not effecting or
being effected by anything.

Distro: Debian SID
Kernel: 2.6.18.3
Lirc: 0.8.1pre3

lsmod:
lirc_serial 13280 0
lirc_dev 14740 1 lirc_serial

lircd:
lircd -n --device=/dev/lirc0 --driver=default ./remotes/sanyo/TV
(the TV in the living room is a Sanyo)

irsend:
irsend SEND_ONCE sanyo-tv01 power
(runs fine, but doesn't power the TV on or off)

irrecord:
irrecord --device=/dev/lirc0 --driver=default outfile.txt
(runs, but ends with:
irrecord: no data for 10 secs, aborting
irrecord: gap not found, can't continue )

I seem to have everything setup, but it's not working. What am I missing?
Am I not using the right driver? Is my IR port not supported? Is there
something else I should be looking into? Special ioports or something for
this machine?

It's been a rough road getting this far. Apparently lirc wants to use
devfs and not udev by default. I finally managed to get around this by
using the ./setup.sh script instead of ./configure to setup the compile
options. But I finally got lirc to compile and install on something other
than a 2.4.33.4 kernel with devfs and gcc-3.4. It's supposedly setup
now with udev and kernel 2.6.18.3 with gcc-4.1. Not that it seems to do
anything aside from chewing up a lot of my time trying to get it to do
something.

dmesg:
lirc_dev: IR Remote Control driver registered, at major 61
lirc_serial: auto-detected active low receiver
lirc_dev: lirc_register_plugin: sample_rate: 0
(after modprobe lirc_serial)

/var/log/lircd:
lircd: lircd(sir) ready
lircd: accepted new client on /dev/lircd
lircd: removed client
lircd: caught signal
(when I run the lircd and ^C it to stop it after irsend)

/etc/udev/rules.d/10-lirc.rules:
KERNEL=="lirc0", NAME="%k", SYMLINK=="lirc"
(manually added)

Insight? Suggestions? I seem to have run out of options at this point.

thanks,
Shadow_7
.