Found this on
http://www.linux-usb.org/:
"Q: Why doesn't USB work at all? I get "device not accepting address".
A: You may have some problem with your PCI setup that's preventing your USB host controller from getting hardware interrupts. When Linux submits a request, but never hears back from the controller, this is the diagnostic you'll see. To see if this is the problem, look at /proc/interrupts to see if the interrupt count for your host controller driver ever goes up. If it doesn't, this is the problem: either your BIOS isn't telling the truth to Linux (ACPI sometimes confuses these things, or setting the expected OS to windows in your BIOS), or Linux doesn't understand what it's saying.
Sometimes a BIOS fix will be available for your motherboard, and in other cases a more recent kernel will have a Linux fix. You may be able to work around this by passing the noapic boot option to your kernel, or (when you're using an add-in PCI card) moving the USB adapter to some other PCI slot. If you're using a current kernel and BIOS, report this problem to the Linux-kernel mailing list, with details about your motherboard and BIOS.
A user with an AOpen AK73Pro motherboard reported that turning off the BIOS option "Assign IRQ for USB" solved this problem for him. Another mentioned that upgrading from BIOS revision 1.16 to 1.20 fixed it (but he wasn't sure if he had an AK73 or the Pro or some other variant).
Another user had this problem with a Sharp Zaurus until he plugged in the power supply into the docking station.
Yet another user with a Sum Vision flash disk found that inserting the device slowly solved this problem. He suspects it takes it time to become active after it gets power before it can properly respond.
Another suggestion that worked for at least one person was to use either pci-noacpi or acpi=off as a boot option."
Hope this helps....
