USB -> Serial port Adapter Troubles (abridged)

From: David Kirk (nospam_at_nospam.net)
Date: 01/30/05 

Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2005 14:36:34 -0500

Hello, after doing quite a bit of googling with no luck I was wondering if
anyone could help me out.

I am trying to get the USB -> serial adaptor on a Targus Mobile Port
Station to work so that I can attach an external serial modem to my
laptop. Other USB devices attached to the system through the Port Station
(which also has a 5 port USB hub) work without any problems so the
hardware does not seem to be at fault. In fact the USB -> serial port is
detected by the system during boot-up, and the correct driver is loaded
and attached to /dev/ttyUSB0 as indicated by the following lines from the
dmesg command:

     drivers/usb/serial/usb-serial.c: USB Serial Driver core v2.0
     drivers/usb/serial/usb-serial.c: USB Serial support registered for
PL-2303
     usb 1-3.1.4.2: PL-2303 converter now attached to ttyUSB0
     drivers/usb/serial/pl2303.c: Prolific PL2303 USB to serial adaptor
driver v0.11

Everything seems OK until any attempt is made to access the port by any
program (e.g. setserial), the program fails indicating a protocol error,
and the file /dev/ttyUSB0 is deleted. Also, the following lines can now be
found using the dmesg command:

     PL-2303 ttyUSB0: pl2303_open - failed submitting interrupt
urb,error -28
     PL-2303 ttyUSB0: PL-2303 converter now disconnected from ttyUSB0

Configuration Info:

       System: Dell Inspiron 5150, 1GB ram, 3.03GHz P4 mobile
Linux Distro: Red Hat - Fedora 3
        Kernel: 2.6.9-1.667

My thanks to all who take the time to read this message!

- David Kirk

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