Pinnacle Systems Remote Kit not working

[thenork]

Hi, I wonder if anyone could help me make my remote control work with my great new xbian 1 beta 1 xbmc on my raspberry pi.

I have a Pinnacle Systems, Inc. Remote Kit Infrared Transceiver purchased quite a while ago.
It comes with a RC-6 MCE remote control, and a usb receiver/transmitter.

Terminal

#lsusb
Bus 001 Device 007: ID 2304:0225 Pinnacle Systems, Inc. Remote Kit Infrared Transceiver

It works great on my older htpc, which I originally installed mythtv on, and then updated to ubuntu 12.04 and xbmc. I think it runs a 3.2 kernel. But it works great on it, mode2 has output, and irw works, and even ir transmission.

However, it does not work out-of-the-box with xbian. Very strangely, if I hold some buttons down for a long time, they sometimes work.
Initially, I plugged it in and got nothing. So then I copied my /etc/lirc/hardware.conf from my old computer to the rpi. Somehow I did get mode2 to send output. irw would sometimes give output from a dev_input remote when I held it down for a long time, and other times, I think when I manually edited lirc.conf to include the mceusb.conf file in remotes, irw would spit out commands from a mceusb remote after I held down some buttons for a while. Most buttons would not work in any scenario.

I imagine it may be related to the kernel, because if I turn off lirc completely (/etc/init.d/lirc stop) and I hold "left" for a while I can see it work on xbmc. And by a while I mean like a full minute.

Then I think I reinstalled xbian and now mode2 does not work, no irw output, but holding down left still does work after a minute. I tried the 3.6 kernel and it did not make a difference.

If I plug the receiver back into my old computer, it still works great. The battery on the remote is fine. So I'm pretty baffled. Does anyone have any advice? I'd really like to have a real remote working, I prefer it to an app remote, and I would also like to do some IR transmitting if possible. Can I build an older kernel or just the RC modules or something?

Thanks to anyone who might help!