You have done a lot of investigation including using the cables on a NINA Astro, which I'm assuming was on a x86_64 device running Windows. The fact you're saying even INDI drivers from 18 months ago aren't working but you had this working 6 month sounds like a RPi hardware issue. Just because Linux can see the cable, doesn't mean it can talk to it. If you can afford it, get another RPi and try your SD card in that, even if this doesn't solve your issue you will have a backup RPi in case the other dies when you least expect it; I lost a few nights of observing as I had a RPi die on me and I didn't have a backup. I know I had issues with my EQ6 connecting when I put the cable into a USB3 port, and I was tearing my hair out trying to work it out.

Here are some other things I would try to rule out:
* use different USB ports and see if they give different results (if the EQ8 is like the EQ6 then you should be using USB2).
* if you're using a USB hub, even a Pegasus Astro, ditch the hub and plug directly into the RPi and only in the USB2 ports
Plugging a USB2 device into a USB3 bus will still have Linux show that the device is on the USB2 bus, this is how you can plug a USB3 hub in with USB2 ports and the devices show up in lsusb has being on the USB2 bus.

Do you have any other USB2 only devices you could test? For me my only other one is my GPS dongle, all the reset use USB3.

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