9pin or 25pin serial cable on bot dell & ibm? straight thru or crossover cable? why not try com1 or com2 on the dell? are those com ports showing in device manager?
can't use a straight thru cable, has to be crossover\null modem cable. straight thru means pin 1 to pin 1 & so on. a serial cable has some wires crossed over such as pin 2 to pin 3 & pin 3 to pin 2. what com ports does it show in device manager?