I read:
You can only use rawmidi devices with Pd and you need to access devices named /dev/midiXY. For that, load the oss-emulation modules, snd-rawmidi, snd_seq_oss, etc.
oh frank you're so right ... I should have thought about it a little more ... and maybe looked:
x@home:~$ ls -l /dev/midi* lrwxr-xr-x 1 root root 12 Nov 17 2004 /dev/midi -> snd/midiC1D0
:)
cheers,
x