USB to serial bug

[math <mclabon seatech fau edu>]

          Hello, 
 
 I've been trying to use a Bafo Technologies BF-810 USB to serial on my RedHat9 
(20.4.20-8) box without success. 
 Here's a summary of what I've tried and some strange results I got
 
 When I plug the device, usbserial and pl2303 are loaded ok. Then I connect
a Win box with hyperterminal to the new port, and cat /dev/usb/ttyUSB0
 First: The fist character is never received. 
 There is no new line (or CR, I can never remember) at the end of the line 
on the echo received on the hyperterm (whereas CR/NL are fine with the same 
config on a regular serial port). 
 Then, I try to send a text file through the serial link. Everything is received 
ok on the Linux side, but the echo on hyperterm is all messed up. 
 Then, when I do a CTRL-C on the Linux console, my computer just freezes, 
with two LEDs on the keyboard blinking. When I do a CTRL-Z instead, and then 
send a TERM signal then a KILL to cat, the process terminates nicely. When 
I just send a KILL, it freezes again. 
 I get the exact same result using an application that I wrote to read the 
serial port. Everything goes well until I close( ) the device. At that point, 
the computer freezes again. 
 When I reboot Linux, if the hyperterm is still active on the win side, a
get a kernel panic. If I either stop the hyperterm or disconnect the serial
link or unplug the USB to serial, Linux boots correctly. 
 
I've read somewhere that some people getting a kernel panic with usbserial
and pl2303 say they solved that by upgrading the kernel. So I upgraded to
20.4.20-30.9. 
 That didn't change anything. In fact, I've read that upgrades to 2.4.23
or higher solve the bug, but I cannot find anything higher than 20.4.20-30.9
for RH9. 
 
Does anybody have a suggestion about what I could try ? 
 Otherwise, does anybody know a USB-to-serial that works fine with kernels 
2.4.20-8 and 2.4.20-30.9 ? 
I guess I could buy a serial to pcmcia, but that's much more expensive -
and that may not work either. 

Thanks in advance. 
 Mathieu