Comment 1 for bug 469376

Finally got a chance to come back to this. After swapping in a freshly wiped disk ( mke2fs -c -c ), I then did a total clean default Ubuntu 9.10 Desktop i386 install. So I am absolutely sure I am starting with a totally clean base. I wanted this because the two systems I worked with previously were both 9.04 to 9.10 upgrades as opposed to new clean installs.
So this time I know for sure there is nothing accidently carried forward through the upgrade process.

At this point I opened a terminal window and did "cd /var/adm ; tail -f messages" and left it running.

I then plugged the Option/AT&T Quicksilver GSM modem into the USB port.

My terminal window captured 10 new lines of /var/adm/messages after the device was inserted but before the system locked up and had to be power cycled. I had to hand write them on paper to save them for entry here, so please forgive any minor transcription errors.

usb 1-5: USB disconnect, address 5
usb 1-5: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 9
usb 1-5: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
scsi 4: SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
usb 1-5: USB disconnect, address 9
hso: /build/buildd/linux-2.6.31/drivers/net/usb/hso.c: 1.2 Option Wireless
usbcore: registered new interface driver hso
usb 1-5: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 10
usb 1-5: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
hso0: Disabled Privacy Extensions

So it would appear the system is actually recognizing the initial ZeroCD function correctly, then correctly disconnects the ZeroCD device, and then somehow hands off to the hso driver to disable the ZeroCD and then re-registers the device as a new interface tied to the hso driver, at some point after the hso driver disables the Privacy Extensions I got the expected total system lockup.

Hopefully, this will provide a clue to someone.