diff --git a/docs/micromate_protocol_reference.md b/docs/micromate_protocol_reference.md
index b9e8610..396dd70 100644
--- a/docs/micromate_protocol_reference.md
+++ b/docs/micromate_protocol_reference.md
@@ -2119,20 +2119,40 @@ FTDI is VID `0403`, Prolific is `067b`.  Note also that counterfeit FTDI chips
 are common in cheap cables — they carry FTDI's VID but may not behave like one,
 and an embedded host with a single driver is far less forgiving than Linux.
 
-### Does this explain the 2026-09-22 field outage?
+### ✅ This accounts for the 2026-09-22 failure
 
-⚠ **Not on the timeline as reported.**  A Prolific cable does not fail
-*gradually* — it never enumerates, so the modem port never works at all.  The
-unit was described as working at first and degrading.
+An earlier draft of this section said the timeline did not fit, because the unit
+was described as *working at first and then degrading* — which a Prolific cable
+cannot do, since it never enumerates at all.
 
-There is one story where it fits: if the initial success was over a **different
-path** — the USB **PC** port, or a bench test before deployment — that would work
-regardless of which serial cable was attached.  The modem path would then have
-been broken from the moment it was deployed, and "it worked and then stopped"
-would be a recollection conflating two connection types days after the fact.
+**The timeline was the thing that needed correcting, not the finding.**  From the
+operator, 2026-09-25:
 
-Plausible, unverified, and recorded as such.  Identifying that unit's cable would
-settle it.
+1. Initial setup — **one** modem, **one** cable.  Worked: configs sent, status
+   read, no trouble.
+2. Two Micromates then had to be deployed, so a **second cable** was fetched to
+   run both at once.
+3. **Only one of the two ever worked.**  The other would not talk over its modem
+   at any point.
+4. That unit was never deployed — a **MiniMate Plus was put out in its place**,
+   and the Micromate came back to the bench.
+5. The cable on that bench unit is a **Benfei (Prolific PL2303)**.
+
+So nothing degraded.  The "worked at first" was the original single-cable setup;
+the failure began when the pair was split across two cables and one of them was
+the wrong chipset.  **One working and one not, set up side by side, is the
+signature of a mixed cable supply** — not of a unit fault.
+
+⚠ Still worth confirming: whether that cable travelled home *with* the unit, or
+was picked up separately at the bench.  If it travelled with it, there is no
+inference left.  Either way the FTDI cable arriving 2026-09-26 settles it — same
+unit, same modem, one variable.
+
+**Corollary worth knowing.**  The standing workaround — *"just deploy a Series III
+instead"* — works partly because a **MiniMate Plus has a DB-9 port directly on the
+unit.**  No USB-to-serial adapter anywhere in the path, so there is no chipset to
+get wrong.  That workaround has been quietly routing around this exact failure
+mode.
 
 ### How this was isolated — the method is reusable