I am trying to get a serial mouse working on my 286 machine, but it is not recognizing anything connected to the serial ports.
So far I have tried:
1: removing all non-essential cards from the system to eliminate possible conflicts
2: swapping out serial controller for various other ISA serial controllers I had laying around (none of them worked in this system)
3: tried different serial port backing plates/case mounted ports
4: double checked if serial port cables were plugged in backwards, they are not.
5: verified that my serial mouse works in another computer

The system recognizes that there are serial ports, but they just don't seem to work. When I ran the onboard American Megatrends communications diagnostic utility with the test adapter plugged in, it timed out on both serial ports.
Neither a mouse or null modem works.
I am thourgholly stumped at this point, it is as if this motherboard just has some deep-seated resentment against comm ports.
Any suggestions? system specs and photos below.

Sorry about the rotated pictures, Imagur decided to randomly flip them for some random reason.

System specs:
Intel 80286 - no math coprocessor
640k base ram, 360k extended
Generic 286 motherboard w/ built in American Megatrends BIOS setup and Diagnostics utilities
IBM CGA video card (from PC-XT)
Acculogic sIDE-3/PLUS IDE/floppy controller
Unbranded? Parallel/Gameport/Dual Serial controller
MS-DOS 6.22
Microsoft Serial Mouse w/ Serial mouse driver

Motherboard

IDE/floppy controller

IBM CGA card

Serial/parallel/gameport interface card

Built in Diagnostics utility results