The device might work with WIDCOMM drivers, someone with time and resources might be able to figure out what happened after widcomm DriverVer=12/07/2006,5.1.0.2800 up to DriverVer=12/05/2007,5.1.0.4800 which disabled 98 device detection (by the Widcomm software) , I believe the change is during the install process. Pure speculation but I believe the reason up to ver 5.1.0.4800 doesn't work is superficial.