While this console API improves handling on real hardware boards
(e.g. clipboard paste is much more reliable, as well as programmatic
communication), it vice-versa poses problems under QEMU, apparently
because it doesn't emulate UART interrupt handling faithfully. That
leads to inability to run the testsuite on QEMU at all. To work that
around, we have to suuport both old and new console routines, and use
the old ones under QEMU.