I currently can't use my GM-210 gps receiver on linux 2.6.8.1.
As soon as a program opens the device, the kernel gives a
message about the failed open and the driver module has a refcount of
4294967295. Here is the offending code snippet from 
drivers/usb/serial/pl2303.c.

in pl2303_open():
        //FIXME: need to assert RTS and DTR if CRTSCTS off

        dbg("%s - submitting read urb", __FUNCTION__);
        port->read_urb->dev = serial->dev;
        result = usb_submit_urb (port->read_urb, GFP_KERNEL);
        if (result) {
                dev_err(&port->dev, "%s - failed submitting read urb, 
error %d\n", __FUNCTION__, result);
                pl2303_close (port, NULL);
                return -EPROTO;
        }


relevant kernel messages:

usbcore: registered new driver usbhid
drivers/usb/input/hid-core.c: v2.0:USB HID core driver
usb 3-4.4: new full speed USB device using address 4
drivers/usb/serial/usb-serial.c: USB Serial support registered for Generic
usbcore: registered new driver usbserial_generic
usbcore: registered new driver usbserial
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 3-4.4: PL-2303 converter now attached to ttyUSB0
usbcore: registered new driver pl2303
drivers/usb/serial/pl2303.c: Prolific PL2303 USB to serial adaptor 
driver v0.11
[after opening of device]
PL-2303 ttyUSB0: pl2303_open - failed submitting interrupt urb, error -28
PL-2303 ttyUSB0: PL-2303 converter now disconnected from ttyUSB0

Since i know nothing of kernel programming, it would be nice if someone 
could fix this.
The above FIXME migth be the key to the problem.

Cheers,
Jonathan

[config attached]