With a new cable, not the one included, it seemed to work again for a while. There's two connected, to two different USB buses, but i'll look into the the powered usb advise too.
After a while however, i got this:
[2015-01-11 20:59:14] AMU0: invalid nonce - HW error
[2015-01-11 21:15:01] AMU0: invalid nonce - HW error
[2015-01-11 22:12:15] AMU 7 SendWork usb write err:(-1) LIBUSB_ERROR_IO
[2015-01-11 22:12:15] AMU 7 attempted reset got err:(0) LIBUSB_SUCCESS
Then the now troublesome unit zombied. Got it up again briefly after some reset/un/re-plugs. Then it just zombied again.