FTDI USB to Serial RS232 Adapter

nigelmercier

nigelmercier

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nigelmercier said:
Avoid the cheap ones like the plague, I have tried several off these, all cause crashes.
I recommend this genuine FTDI USB to RS232 adapter...
With a single serial port: http://amzn.to/1cEOL4h
Or a with a dual serial port: http://amzn.to/1ccP1fG
Click to expand...

Just a heads-up on cheap USB to Serial adaptors, in particular those that claim to have a FTDI chip:

FTDI cracks down on chip counterfeiting
Did any of your USB devices recently stop working? Does that device include the popular FT232 chip? Then it’s probably a counterfeit, my friend...

It’s no secret that the market is flooded with counterfeit chips of all sorts, and the most common device from FTDI is not an exception. In an attempt to flush out the pretenders the most recent driver included in Windows Update discreetly changes the PID (product ID) of fake chips from 0x6001 to 0x0000, meaning that from then on, the OS will have no idea which driver should hit the stage. It’s a soft brick so it is reversible and by all accounts its driven lots of blameless users crazy. Don't panic, by this time, the driver change is no longer included in the update.

Source: Elektor Magazine news update
 
My laptop talks to my Garmin 128 with a £2 converter which has always worked perfectly. No idea what is inside it.

I'll remember the post if it sulks next time I fire it up.

On the bigger picture- if OS and SW companies feel free to zap our hardware secretly, it raise serious concerns.
 
nigelmercier said:
the most recent driver included in Windows Update discreetly changes the PID (product ID) of fake chips from 0x6001 to 0x0000, meaning that from then on, the OS will have no idea which driver should hit the stage.
Click to expand...

Sounds like sensationalist journalism to me. How can the driver change the PID of the chip :confused: Just possibly, the 'fake' chips are not in fact perfect clones, and the updated driver simply no longer works with them?
 
Odd report. I made up my own connecting cable from a usb wire/plug and the remnants of an RS232 plug. Simple bit of software from Prolific to do the necessary. But no chip needed. So what does this FTDI chip do?
 
birdseye said:
Odd report. I made up my own connecting cable from a usb wire/plug and the remnants of an RS232 plug. Simple bit of software from Prolific to do the necessary. But no chip needed. So what does this FTDI chip do?
Click to expand...

If what you made worked (a RS232 connection acting as a USB device) then a chip must have been there somewhere. They are sometimes buried in the actual connector. RS232 is simple - it just converts a byte's bits to voltage levels at a constant rate. USB is complex. When you plug your device in there is a whole load of guff going backwards and forwards so that the host can identify the device that's just been plugged in before any data are transferred. The chip in the device does all this. There are 2 main manufacturers - Prolific and FTDI. It's also possible to implement a lot of it in software running on a microcontroller, although the microcontroller will need to provide some hardware support if a decent data transfer rate is to be achieved. This YAPP project does that - plug it into a computer and a virtual serial port appears...

http://yappelectronics.co.uk/STU.htm
 
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yotter said:
This may explain a problem which I am having, both my convertors seem to have stopped working. Is there a way to change the ID back to allow them to work? I am not aware of them being fakes?
Click to expand...

I don't believe that it is possible that the PID (or VID) in the device has been changed. They are hard coded in at manufacture and changing them goes against the whole concept of USB.
 
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