Thanks for the quick patches! I'm working my way to your kernel branch to rule
out other changes fixing the issue. May take a little bit as I've not had to
build my own kernels before.

Anyway, going from 4.10 to the 4.13rc2 kernel found here
http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.13-rc2/

Has the same problem, although slightly less reliably, and now including ring
test errors.

With less reliably I mean, I've seen the driver *sometimes* working a 2nd
binding, but give the same error on the 3rd time.

More results pending.