Hi Daniel Gimpelevich and further co-sufferers,

I'm as well plagued with this USB bug on all my machines for a long long while now and so far didn't see any solution.

Your description you  posted on 2008-04-19 looked like a very promising approach.  However, following your logic when removing the 1.1 modules (i.e. either uhci or ohci) than the resets should stop. Unfortunately I can't confirm such a behavior.

First let me post the facts
In fact, I'm right now at a computer with the following SIS  chipset:
00:00.0 Host bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 661FX/M661FX/M661MX Host (rev 11)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS AGP Port (virtual PCI-to-PCI bridge)
00:02.0 ISA bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS964 [MuTIOL Media IO] (rev 36)
00:02.5 IDE interface: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 5513 [IDE] (rev 01)
00:02.7 Multimedia audio controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] AC'97 Sound Controller (rev a0)
00:03.0 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.1 Controller (rev 0f)
00:03.1 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.1 Controller (rev 0f)
00:03.2 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.1 Controller (rev 0f)
00:03.3 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 2.0 Controller
00:09.0 Communication controller: Conexant HSF 56k HSFi Modem (rev 01)
00:0d.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): VIA Technologies, Inc. IEEE 1394 Host Controller (rev 80)
00:0e.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 661/741/760 PCI/AGP or 662/761Gx PCIE VGA Display Adapter

and running 
root@bitola:/home/mafeu# uname -a
Linux bitola 2.6.24-2.6.24.4.slh.3-sidux-686 #1 SMP PREEMPT Mon Mar 31 14:37:59 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux

(I know, this is not Ubuntu, but this bug seems to be at least in all Debian-derived and this page here is the best documentation I found so far)

I unplugged all USB devices so that I'm just left with one USB 2.0 device and the internal card reader

root@bitola:/home/mafeu# lsusb
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 1019:0c55 Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS) USB Flash Reader, Desknote UCR-61S2B
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0e21:1000 Cowon Systems, Inc.
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000

I guess this listing pretty much reflects the three 1.1 controllers and the one 2.0 controller.

The following output might also be interesting:

root@bitola:/home/mafeu# lsmod|grep hci
ohci_hcd               27780  0
ehci_hcd               36876  0
firewire_ohci          19456  0
firewire_core          44096  1 firewire_ohci
usbcore               140268  6 uvcvideo,usb_storage,libusual,ohci_hcd,ehci_hcd
ssb                    35204  1 ohci_hcd

My thought was now, if I remove the ohci_hcd module the only leftover device is the USB 2.0 device and the suspected reset situations should not happen anymore. So:
root@bitola:/home/mafeu# modprobe -rv ohci_hcd
rmmod /lib/modules/2.6.24-2.6.24.4.slh.3-sidux-686/kernel/drivers/usb/host/ohci-hcd.ko
rmmod /lib/modules/2.6.24-2.6.24.4.slh.3-sidux-686/kernel/drivers/ssb/ssb.ko
rmmod /lib/modules/2.6.24-2.6.24.4.slh.3-sidux-686/kernel/drivers/pcmcia/pcmcia.ko
rmmod /lib/modules/2.6.24-2.6.24.4.slh.3-sidux-686/kernel/drivers/pcmcia/pcmcia_core.ko
root@bitola:/home/mafeu# lsmod|grep hci
ehci_hcd               36876  0
firewire_ohci          19456  0
firewire_core          44096  1 firewire_ohci
usbcore               140268  5 uvcvideo,usb_storage,libusual,ehci_hcd

But nontheless, I still get

usb 1-7: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3
usb 1-7: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3

while copying files from the device.

Cheers,
  Martin