well now... a USB-to-Serial comm port with no documentation, no model number and the wrong driver disc...

eventually i found the make and model and manufacturer by:

1)downloading the driver guide toolkit
2)viewing all my devices, and investigating the PNP ID of the USB device (it was under problem devices because there was no driver loaded)
in my case there was VID_067B&PID_2303
VID=vendor ID, and after googling for "pnp id 067B"
i found this page:
http://www.maxtux.co.uk/dist/yoper/3.2.2/cd1/usr/share/hwdata/usb.ids
that listed a whole stack of vendor ID's, and lo... Prolific was the vendor.
a quick trip back to driverguide to hunt up the prolific website, and avast ye! a 2303 product was found ... along with drivers ... ahhh...

i hope this can be of some use to someone out there