27 ms·

Have FTDI kicked-off round 2 of the clone wars?

158 points by linker3000 11y ago

kefka 11y ago
There's a term we in random ee blogs call this: being ftdicked If you run a windows platform and you introduce FTDI chips in your design schematic, you run afoul of using accidentally counterfeit chips. Digikey and Mouser both have had this problem of counterfeits in their supply chain. And we aren't discussing FTDI-compatible chips, that do not counterfeit or claim to be FTDI. But the FTDI kills them all. The safer alternative is to use a USB-serial chip that's cheaper, and doesn't harass users or nuke their chips: ch340G Datasheet: https://www.olimex.com/Products/Breadboarding/BB-CH340T/resources/CH340DS1.PDF https://www.olimex.com/Products/Breadboarding/BB-CH340T/reso...
- Tomte 11y ago
  And the real solution is to get a grip on your supply chain. Somehow with FTDI chips it's "normal", "okay" and expected to get counterfeit goods. And heaven forbid the original manufacturer doesn't support you in your innocence. But if someone ships you a fake ATtiny all hell breaks loose and the Chinese ebay seller must be punished, hours and hours are spent communicating with ebay, with PayPal, with other users' on web forums. Hobbyist electronics people are strange. Wake up and give Mouser hell if they send you faked goods!
  - quadrature 11y ago
    Well, that's kind of what FTDI is trying to accomplish. You won't buy from the same supplier again after getting a counterfeit.
    - lultimouomo 11y ago
      I probably won't by FTDI either!
    - kefka 11y ago
      Or better yet, you just stay away from FTDI, knowing that their capriciousness can lead to customers' devices being bricked or disabled in various ways. The CH340G is really a nice and cheap chip. And I'm starting to see it in more established American designs too (as opposed to Chinese designed electronics).
    - gvb 11y ago
      For FTDI, their battle is becoming (has become?) a Pyrrhic victory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrhic_victory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrhic_victory
    - deelowe 11y ago
      LOL! Don't buy from farnell, mouser, or digikey? They've all had issues with fakes getting into the supply. Are we supposed to just up and boycott them all? And, once I've exhausted the top 3 distributors, now where do I go? I'm sure I can just call up FTDI and order 10k chips on a weekly basis right? Actually, that's a pretty good idea. Anyone who works in supply chain, switch to ordering directly from FTDI. They'll soon realize the folly in this decision.
      - st3v3r 11y ago
        It's their responsibility to make sure that they're selling me what they promised me. If they can't do that, then maybe I shouldn't be purchasing from them.
        deelowe 11y ago
        Ok fine. Link me the spec that allows me to determine whether an FTDI part is genuine and I'll gladly inform the supply chain, manufacturing and testing teams I work with to reference that spec moving forward. Until then, we have to avoid anything with an FTDI brand as there's no way to be sure. Going with whomever I think is the most reputable supplier and then praying my products aren't bricked at some point in the future isn't the solution.
        st3v3r 11y ago
        Again, that is all their responsibility.
        deelowe 11y ago
        Who is this they you are referring to? If ftdi doesn't provide specs, resellers can't create them out of thin air. My only option is to not buy ftdi.
      - quadrature 11y ago
        I didn't say it was effective, its a tricky problem to curb.
  - rhinoceraptor 11y ago
    And what if the fake FTDI is in a piece of medical equipment keeping someone alive? Surely FTDI has no culpability in bricking it, they should have gotten a grip on their supply chain!
    - Tomte 11y ago
      Yes, they should have. And tested the function. The applicable standards actually demand it. Safety development is serious business. You cannot justify your "I want everything as cheap as possible, counterfeit or not" attitude with some hallucinated safety risk.
      - kefka 11y ago
        > Yes, they should have. And tested the function. The applicable standards actually demand it. I agree. I don't want to put counterfeits in my product. Now, show me FTDI's standards documents that indicate how to identify and test for fakes. (Hint: they don't)
        Tomte 11y ago
        In this case it's obviously simple: you are not allowed to update drivers unless you have validated them. As far as I understand, this "behaviour" is totally deterministic and certain. You immediately notice the problem in any test system. Don't believe that safety-critical devices are allowed to install some drivers willy-nilly!
        creshal 11y ago
        > As far as I understand, this "behaviour" is totally deterministic and certain. You immediately notice the problem in any test system. FTDI does not provide any guide lines to third parties how to test whether their chips are counterfeit or not. The only way to test it is trying to use it with FTDI's Windows driver, and FTDI randomly changes the both the detection criteria, and the action done on detecting a counterfeit chip – sometimes it bricks them, sometimes it sends gibberish, you have no way of knowing beforehand. FTDI doesn't even guarantee that this behaviour is deterministic!
  - kefka 11y ago
    But that's the rub: FTDI doesn't have any good process to identify fake chips, other than "install it in your board and wait and see". And if you've tried ordering from FTDI themselves, they routinely have shortages and backlogs going from 3-6 months out. Meaning you lean on reputable places like Mouser or Digikey. And you also glossed over "FTDI compatible" chips. They too exist, and do not claim to be a legit FTDI (the markings on the case are what make a counterfeit, not the underlying silicon). Yet the FTDI driver disables them all, in one way or another. You assume I'm talking purely about the hobbyist market: anyone who pays for a usb FTDI adapter at $1.50 should know it's likely a counterfeit.
    - daphreak 11y ago
      3-6 months is not that bad. Especially if it means you can guarantee that you get genuine parts. Most real projects can easily handle this lead time for production.
      - DanBC 11y ago
        6 months would be tolerated for a hard to get specialist part - a particular connector that's made in smaller batches twice a year, perhaps. But for a normal part? It's lousy.
  - kabdib 11y ago
    Frankly, I don't think about counterfeit chips. If I did, and had a meaningful way to determine a counterfeit, then I'd not buy products with them. But there's no way for an end-user to do this. And since they're the ones being punished by the bricking (any supply chain movement is a second-order effect driven by upset customers), and since I lack the technical capacity to identify a knock-off, then my most rational course of action is to avoid anything that might be counterfeit . . . by insisting on a totally different chip. Not having FTDI in your design is a feature. And that's easily checked by plugging the device into a USB port and looking at the VID/PID. FTDI has a death wish.
  - leoedin 11y ago
    I've purchased what I thought was an industrial spec microcontroller board from a legitimate and respected supplier, through Farnell, and it had a counterfeit FTDI chip on it. I built that board into a piece of test equipment that's likely to be used for 5 or 10 years. Fortunately this whole saga happened while I was still developing it - if their chip bricking driver had been released a year later, I'd probably not have known about it. Someone would connect the test PC to Windows Update in 3 years time, and the device would stop working. Counterfeit chips are a reality, and not one that people building devices on a small scale can properly mitigate against. Not buying chips on alibaba is common sense, but not buying pre-built modules from Farnell? If you're not going to buy them from Farnell, where are you going to buy them from?
    - Tomte 11y ago
      I'm not disputing that you can easily get a counterfeit chip without it being your fault. But why do you simply accept that? Have you even complained to Farnell? Read the sundry web forums, very few people complain to their distributor. Everyone bitches about FTDI. And that's what's really bugging me here. In the FTDI case the problem has obviously gotten out of hand. I can totally understand that the manufacturer wants to get tougher.
      - raphman_ 11y ago
        The problem is that FTDI ist taking it out on the customer, and hoping that "the FTDI driver bricked my board" somehow gets those customers to (1) realize that the problem is a counterfeit chip, (2) work their way up the supply chain until they find the party at fault (or get the supply chain to take care of the problem), and (3) manage to get a replacement for the product which uses genuine FTDI chips. Why not just pop up a small window with a message "Hey, this product seems to contain counterfeit chips. Please tell us where you bought it so that _we_ can take care of the problem."
        jnky 11y ago
        Just FYI, but displaying a Message Box from the context of a Windows device driver is not trivial and would add significant overhead to the driver. I'd prefer it if FTDI weren't utter douchebags around this whole ordeal. I understand they have to make money, but since when is it a problem when devices are API-compatible with existing device drivers? As far as I'm concerned, this is a rather common and generally beneficial thing.
  - jdietrich 11y ago
    Nobody has total control over their supply chain. Substitution of counterfeit parts can happen at many points in the supply chain. Until resilient die-level traceability is universal, the best you can hope for is to minimise the risk. FTDI do not provide any useful traceability systems. Rather than providing their customers with a reliable means to identify genuine parts, they have hugely increased the risk posed to their customers by counterfeit parts. http://www.publicintegrity.org/2011/11/07/7323/counterfeit-chips-plague-pentagon-weapons-systems http://www.publicintegrity.org/2011/11/07/7323/counterfeit-c... http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/counterfeit-chips-on-the-rise http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/counterfeit-chip...
  - drzaiusapelord 11y ago
    >Hobbyist electronics people are strange. Popular moralism in a nutshell. "I can steal from big companies because they're evil! But if someone even samples one of my songs I'm lawyering up!" There's something almost psychopathic about how people just rationalize amorality because the entity they're attacking from is "big" or "different" Or "the other." I guess the mp3 wars are over with Google Music, Spotify, Apple Music, etc but for a long time it was creepy to hear these justifications from otherwise normal adults. It made you think, "What if they see me and my interests as 'the other'? What would they do without a conscience to stop them?"
- gsteinb88 11y ago
  How reliable is the documentation for the ch340g? I don't have experience with Olimex directly, and for production designs I'm wary of datasheets that are translated this poorly -- while they frequently are just fine, i've run into numerous cases where the translation has either introduced ambiguity or is just plain incomprehensible. And that's the rub: if i get a legit ftdi chip, I have a high level of trust that it will do what it says, and there's tons of documentation.
  - ArbitraryHobo 11y ago
    > I have a high level of trust that it will do what it says Even after seeing them pull a stunt like this in their drivers?
  - tremon 11y ago
    And how will you know that you actually got a legit ftdi chip?
    - gsteinb88 11y ago
      I dont. I'm not defending FTDI's actions w/r/t their driver, just pointing out that ftdi does currently fill the market niche of "reliable, good usb-serial devices", and while I'd love for someone else to provide equivalent chips without the shit ftdi pulls, no one else has.
  - baobrien 11y ago
    Cypress and Microchip also have USB-UART chips that cost less than FTDI's parts and are well documented. The CY7C65213 is even a pin-compatible replacement for the FT232R and shows up as a USB CDC device.
    - gsteinb88 11y ago
      Nifty, thanks. I've been lucky enough to be able to default to microcontrollers with usb-serial built in recently, but that's lookkng to be short lived...
- analog31 11y ago
  Are the CH340G drivers open source? I bought a pile of them, but have been skittish about installing one because I can't figure out where the drivers come from. Granted, knowing that FTDI's drivers come from FTDI doesn't prevent them from messing around with them, but still, the CH340G seems like more of a mystery.
  - welterde 11y ago
    The datasheet does not seem to be very specific on what protocol it actually uses. It does however state it is software-compatible to CH341 and for that there is a linux driver[1]. [1] https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/usb/serial/ch341.c https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux....
  - tyingq 11y ago
    For drivers other than Linux: The manufacturer's website is http://wch.cn http://wch.cn Their drivers are here: http://wch.cn/index.php?s=/page-search_content-keyword-USB%E8%BD%AC%E4%B8%B2%E5%8F%A3-type-50-p-2.html http://wch.cn/index.php?s=/page-search_content-keyword-USB%E... They don't appear to be open source, but I believe they are signed drivers for both Windows and OSX.
mkj 11y ago
Why do people need a FTDI driver, it appears that Windows has a USB Serial Class driver? https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/dn707976(v=vs.85).aspx https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/dn... At least on recent OSX the OS CDC one seems more robust than the FTDI provided one if you pull a cable while it's running. (I assume it's a genuine chip, who knows!)
- creshal 11y ago
  Windows 10 automatically installs FTDI's driver without asking the user, or giving the user the option to opt-out, or a way to downgrade to a working version of the driver. The best Windows ever keeps getting better; or something.
  - drzaiusapelord 11y ago
    Those FTDI chips and clones only work with that driver. They aren't class compliant. What should Windows do here when a device gives the FTDI USB ID? Seems like its doing what it should.
    - Nullabillity 11y ago
      Use the old driver? At least give the user the option to keep using the old driver?
      - drzaiusapelord 11y ago
        Windows has driver roll-back built-in. Also, businesses typically use WSUS, where you need to intentionally whitelist driver updates. If you have a CNC machine set to get all Windows Update from MS without oversight and testing, well, you're doing it wrong. I suspect a lot of "GUISE MY CLIENTS ALL HAVE DOWNED MACHINES THIS MORNING" is straight-up bullshit. In my experience, CNC machines are sacred cows and never, ever updated, let alone ever get driver updates. Hell, it isn't even patch Tuesday. This does punish the hobbyist who just bought some toy and WU grabbed the latest driver. The world's manufacturing isn't going down this morning. Lets stop being naive.
andmarios 11y ago
It is time we get a meme with Richard Stallman saying “I told you so”.
- arpa 11y ago
  Wonderfully put.
- pbhjpbhj 11y ago
  https://imgflip.com/i/yedoi https://imgflip.com/i/yedoi ;0)>
  - TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
    http://games.usvsth3m.com/javascript-under-pressure/stallman.gif http://games.usvsth3m.com/javascript-under-pressure/stallman...
- kybernetyk 11y ago
  > “I told you so”. That breaking a license and using software with hardware it wasn't ever intended to be used with might produce undefined behaviour? Don't get me wrong: It would be great if we had an open source FTDI driver. But putting the blame on FTDI for all the people effectively pirating their software isn't the way to go. If you are a stern supporter of Free/open source licenses you also need to accept other peoples' rights to license their work as they think is right. Because without a strong licensing framework GPL & co. don't work either.
  - deelowe 11y ago
    Here we go again. The issue here is that it's really difficult to buy chips directly from FTDI. So.. you have to buy from a distributor. Those distributors also buy from 3rd parties, trade inventory, issue new old stock, etc... How can I, as consumer, be absolutely positive that that the "FTDI" chip in my device is genuine? I'll go ahead and answer that. I can't. Anyone who works in the electronics industry knows this. When everything is made in china, it's very hard to be sure that fakes don't end up where they shouldn't belong. Why do I bring this up? Because, last time they pulled this crap, reputable brand's products were damaged. Somehow some fakes ended up in their supply and those customers got screwed. OK, so sure, we can fix the supply chain, add expensive testing to the manufacturing process, buy direct from manufacturer, etc... or hey, I got a better idea. Let's just not buy FTDI any longer. That sounds much cheaper and less painful.
daphreak 11y ago
While I don't like that FTDI is pushing their brick-making drivers out over automatic updates, I think the folks calling for everyone to ditch their chips are a little over the top. Personally, I would love to have a reliable way to detect counterfeit chips. For FTDI I do! Now it is trivial to lot test my chips: Just put one (or a few depending on your level of quality) on a test jig and use the latest driver with it. Contrast that with one of these other generic pieces of silicon. Is the argument that since the drivers are generic it doesn't matter if counterfeits make it into your products? Of course it still matters! Every single datasheet value that you used in your design is now out the window. FTDI should absolutely be more forthcoming with their counterfeit detection process. It is going to be a tough call next time I need a USB-Serial chip. FTDI has a great product and documentation, but a future update might break my device if it used counterfeit components that were so far undetected.
- raverbashing 11y ago
  Sure, if you are willing to throw your money away because some driver thinks you have a "fake chip" so be it. Oh and it's not reliable because you might get one that's accepted by the current driver but gets bricked in the future
- tw04 11y ago
  The correct thing to do would be to throw the user a warning... not cause irrevocable harm. It's not going to stop the counterfeiters, it's just going to hurt legitimate customers. This would be akin to the government poisoning cocaine shipments with anthrax to try to stop the drugs from flowing in. You won't stop anything, you'll only hurt "innocent" people.
  - tremon 11y ago
    No, not cocaine. That implies the end users are actually doing something socially undesirable. A better analogy would be the government enforcing an import ban by adding sugar to the petrol imported from specific countries.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
a2tech 11y ago
And the calls from my manufacturing clients are already beginning to roll in. Lots of expensive CNC machines are going to be idle this morning while local stores are raided for serial to USB adapters, tested, then returned.
mrob 11y ago
It is impossible to detect counterfeit chips electronically. The driver can only check if something produces signals that when interpreted as USB protocol indicate the FTDI PID/VID, but crucially it cannot know if this is the correct interpretation. That depends on the presence or absence of the trademarked USB logo on the device. It's entirely possible that the device has no USB logo, in which case it is not officially USB and the data the driver is interpreting as FTDI PID/VID could mean anything.
- throwaway7767 11y ago
  If the device doesn't have the USB logo, it means they didn't pay the USB implementors forum. There are plenty of devices which implement USB, but don't pay the license fees. It doesn't mean they just output garbage. I've also seen devices with the vaunted logo on them which failed spectacularly when it came to following USB specs. I'm not sure what point you're making regarding the infeasibility of detecting counterfeit chips. It's not like these chips were bricked by accident. FTDI is specifically going out of its way to exploit bugs in these clones to brick them. So it looks like they have the detection thing pretty well covered. You'll note that the opensource linux drivers works just as well with the clones. That's because they do not expend extra effort to make them not work.
  - mrob 11y ago
    The point is it's possible to build something that does not use USB, but which uses an almost identical protocol differing only in the meanings of the PIDs/VIDs. If it's based off USB 1.0 then any patents have expired, and if you don't call it "USB" or "FTDI" there is no trademark violation. In that case you would be doing absolutely nothing wrong, but the FTDI driver would still falsely detect it as "counterfeit".
    - mrob 11y ago
      Not sure why I'm being downvoted here. In the USA, deliberately using counterfeit trademarks is a crime, not just a tort (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark_Counterfeiting_Act_of_1984 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark_Counterfeiting_Act_o... ). The standard for being found guilty of a crime is "beyond reasonable doubt", not just "preponderance of the evidence" as it would be for a tort. There is no way to electronically establish counterfeiting has occurred beyond reasonable doubt, because the completely legal scenario I described is electronically indistinguishable. It's not acceptable to go accusing people of crimes when you know you can't meet that standard of proof. EDIT: As a practical example, consider the case of I2C. This is a proprietary NXP protocol, and you have to pay to get slave addresses. So instead people use "Two Wire Interface", which is not I2C but is electronically indistinguishable. The only way to detect counterfeit use of I2C is looking at the packaging/documentation.
flashingleds 11y ago
If anyone out there is looking for alternatives, last time this happened I switched to the MCP2221 from microchip. It's been in about 6 hobby projects now and I'm very happy with it. Half the price in small quantities and easier to hand solder (14SO or even DIP vs 28TSSOP)
- baobrien 11y ago
  Cypress also has a bunch of USB UART chips, with comparable ones being about half the price of their FTDI equivalents.
- noonespecial 11y ago
  Bump for MCP2221. That's the one we ended up settling on. IMHO its cheaper, better, and easier to get in the small (100's) quantity we use them.
- CountSessine 11y ago
  Does it use a class CDC interface? Or does it require special drivers like the FTDI and Prolific chips? Are the drivers available for all OS's?
  - CountSessine 11y ago
    Answering my own question, it looks like it's a plain-Jane CDC device, which seems to me like really great progress - now that we've put Windows XP behind us, these chips really should be using CDC rather than proprietary drivers.
- ploxiln 11y ago
  It's also worth mentioning that it uses the USB-CDC ("communications device class") standard driver, which is long supported/included in windows and linux and intended for use by arbitrary manufacturers. The situation is not unlike that of usb keyboard/mice which use the HID ("human interface device") standard driver (which MCP2221 apparently also supports). So there won't be any argument or shenanigans about whether any third-party chip should be allowed to be compatible with this commonly available driver.
headShrinker 11y ago
Recently I bought a 3D printer from China, and surprise, can't flash the Arduino chip. This was a bit of a set back but after a little googling, I found a work around and was backup and running. Here is the patch for anyone who's interested, http://kiguino.moos.io/2014/12/31/how-to-use-arduino-nano-mini-pro-with-CH340G-on-mac-osx-yosemite.html http://kiguino.moos.io/2014/12/31/how-to-use-arduino-nano-mi...
ohazi 11y ago
This is (still) a stupidly reckless approach to "addressing" the supply chain counterfeit problem. One of these days they're going to brick a pacemaker and kill someone. You have to be a special kind of delusional to think that the courts are going to care about your "good intentions" when you knowingly release a driver like this. And "pacemaker" is really a placeholder for any system that could end up affecting safety of life, regardless of whether it was intentionally designed to. How many of these FTDI chips do you suppose are on a 747? An elevator controller? A fire suppression system? A one-off alarm system at a power plant? A nuclear power plant? How many hoops do you have to jump through before you start to leave your comfort zone? Not many... A single lawsuit from a bad enough accident could end the company in one fell swoop. This should be a much bigger existential concern for FTDI than any amount of potential IP theft. If I were their general council, I would be looking for the vigilante engineer to sumarily fire, and put in place mechanisms to ensure that this never happens in the future.
- noonespecial 11y ago
  I think the damage is done and more subtle than a huge public disaster. When the fake-killer driver burst onto the scene previously, I just switched to microchip MCP2221's. It just wasn't worth the risk that I might accidentally source a counterfeit on a BOM and not find out until later. If it says FTDI on it, its now a no go. Just no way to be sure anymore.
  - snvzz 11y ago
    So that the next person doesn't have to search for it: http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/DeviceDoc/20005292B.pdf http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/DeviceDoc/20005292B.pd...
  - throwaway7767 11y ago
    Exactly. I switched to Cypress (CP2102) chips as a response to this, even though I haven't been hit with any of these tactics from FTDI yet. They work just great. Prolific (PL2303) work well too, but I've had some issues with high baud rates there so I avoid them. The fact is, it's impossible for me to know if an IC is genuine or not. Therefore, buying FTDI is now like playing russian roulette. If you got unlucky, you (or your customer) will have a nasty surprise, possibly years down the line. The rational choice is therefore to buy chips from manufacturers that don't do this.
ChuckMcM 11y ago
I can't say I'm feeling sorry for the counterfeiters. Now it sucks if you got suckered into thinking you had bought one thing and ended up with another, back when RAM was both expensive and in short supply(and Intel was still making it) it was not uncommon to have "grey market" RAM with Intel markings but substandard chips. It is always interesting to see the mechanics at play too, people who get counterfeit chips are more often (but not always) people who have released all "quality" requirements in order to achieve the lowest possible price. As being price preferred they put themselves at risk of getting substandard parts, and then when they get parts that don't work or work anomalously, they frame that problem as someone else's problem rather than their own choice. In the referenced forum post you have a person using "Chinese clone" Arduino nanos which happen to have chips on them that report as FTDI USB to serial converters but are in fact something else. So drop the vendor or have the vendor write their own USB driver for windows but why hate on FTDI for identifying the bogus chip and refusing to work with it?
- bri3d 11y ago
  Because they're breaking the consumer's experience, not the vendor's. I guess their assumption is that angry consumers will trickle up to the vendor and cause them to go "genuine," but that seems unlikely to me. Why? Because as a consumer, I have no way of knowing whether the FTDI product I'm buying is genuine. It adds risk to buying anything that says "FTDI" on it. I'm not going to vote with my wallet for some nebulous, unverifiable assertion that a chip will be real FTDI before I get it. I'm going to vote for something I know I can plug in and use. Already a lot of counterfeit users of FTDI (i.e. knockoff Arduinos and cheap "VAG-COM KKL" auto diagnostic cables) are switching to CH340 instead of buying real FTDI.
  - ChuckMcM 11y ago
    I agree, and then the consumer decides it isn't worth buying the knock-offs, and the vendor switches to something which costs more than their counterfeit but isn't as expensive as the FTDI parts and we're back to competing above ground rather than below ground. I'm hoping we can train consumers to not buy things based on "lowest price" without understanding what was done to achieve that price.
5ilv3r 11y ago
Whatever is on the knockoff nanos now seems great. cg340 or something. 5 years ago I had a hell of a time trying to unlearn parallel port crap and figure out all the ftdi hype, aaand now I don't have to worry about it. Stupid move ftdi.
felhr 11y ago
Somedays ago discovered that my FT232 which I used to develop a FTDI user-space driver for Android is a counterfeit one. Ironically the feedback I've received about this project is mostly positive. I now have to test the Flow control and the parity/frame... signals so I hope I wont have to buy one. Before the 1st FTDIGate, as a guy who has implemented user-space drivers for the most common USB to serial converters my opinions about the FTDI were quite good (from an engineering standpoint I really like the solution they use to send the CTS,Parity status, Break... in a two bytes packet every 40ms which it is a good simulation of a serial port instead of having to poll sending control commands) but now I would recommend to avoid them. From my humble experience I would recommend CP2102, they work fine (and have a nice documentation for driver developers). The CH340/CH341 is real pain.

158 points by linker3000 11y ago

kefka 11y ago

There's a term we in random ee blogs call this: being ftdicked If you run a windows platform and you introduce FTDI chips in your design schematic, you run afoul of using accidentally counterfeit chips. Digikey and Mouser both have had this problem of counterfeits in their supply chain. And we aren't discussing FTDI-compatible chips, that do not counterfeit or claim to be FTDI. But the FTDI kills them all. The safer alternative is to use a USB-serial chip that's cheaper, and doesn't harass users or nuke their chips: ch340G Datasheet: https://www.olimex.com/Products/Breadboarding/BB-CH340T/resources/CH340DS1.PDF https://www.olimex.com/Products/Breadboarding/BB-CH340T/reso...

Tomte 11y ago
And the real solution is to get a grip on your supply chain. Somehow with FTDI chips it's "normal", "okay" and expected to get counterfeit goods. And heaven forbid the original manufacturer doesn't support you in your innocence. But if someone ships you a fake ATtiny all hell breaks loose and the Chinese ebay seller must be punished, hours and hours are spent communicating with ebay, with PayPal, with other users' on web forums. Hobbyist electronics people are strange. Wake up and give Mouser hell if they send you faked goods!
- quadrature 11y ago
  Well, that's kind of what FTDI is trying to accomplish. You won't buy from the same supplier again after getting a counterfeit.
  - lultimouomo 11y ago
    I probably won't by FTDI either!
  - kefka 11y ago
    Or better yet, you just stay away from FTDI, knowing that their capriciousness can lead to customers' devices being bricked or disabled in various ways. The CH340G is really a nice and cheap chip. And I'm starting to see it in more established American designs too (as opposed to Chinese designed electronics).
  - gvb 11y ago
    For FTDI, their battle is becoming (has become?) a Pyrrhic victory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrhic_victory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrhic_victory
  - deelowe 11y ago
    LOL! Don't buy from farnell, mouser, or digikey? They've all had issues with fakes getting into the supply. Are we supposed to just up and boycott them all? And, once I've exhausted the top 3 distributors, now where do I go? I'm sure I can just call up FTDI and order 10k chips on a weekly basis right? Actually, that's a pretty good idea. Anyone who works in supply chain, switch to ordering directly from FTDI. They'll soon realize the folly in this decision.
    - st3v3r 11y ago
      It's their responsibility to make sure that they're selling me what they promised me. If they can't do that, then maybe I shouldn't be purchasing from them.
      - deelowe 11y ago
        Ok fine. Link me the spec that allows me to determine whether an FTDI part is genuine and I'll gladly inform the supply chain, manufacturing and testing teams I work with to reference that spec moving forward. Until then, we have to avoid anything with an FTDI brand as there's no way to be sure. Going with whomever I think is the most reputable supplier and then praying my products aren't bricked at some point in the future isn't the solution.
        st3v3r 11y ago
        Again, that is all their responsibility.
        deelowe 11y ago
        Who is this they you are referring to? If ftdi doesn't provide specs, resellers can't create them out of thin air. My only option is to not buy ftdi.
    - quadrature 11y ago
      I didn't say it was effective, its a tricky problem to curb.
- rhinoceraptor 11y ago
  And what if the fake FTDI is in a piece of medical equipment keeping someone alive? Surely FTDI has no culpability in bricking it, they should have gotten a grip on their supply chain!
  - Tomte 11y ago
    Yes, they should have. And tested the function. The applicable standards actually demand it. Safety development is serious business. You cannot justify your "I want everything as cheap as possible, counterfeit or not" attitude with some hallucinated safety risk.
    - kefka 11y ago
      > Yes, they should have. And tested the function. The applicable standards actually demand it. I agree. I don't want to put counterfeits in my product. Now, show me FTDI's standards documents that indicate how to identify and test for fakes. (Hint: they don't)
      - Tomte 11y ago
        In this case it's obviously simple: you are not allowed to update drivers unless you have validated them. As far as I understand, this "behaviour" is totally deterministic and certain. You immediately notice the problem in any test system. Don't believe that safety-critical devices are allowed to install some drivers willy-nilly!
        creshal 11y ago
        > As far as I understand, this "behaviour" is totally deterministic and certain. You immediately notice the problem in any test system. FTDI does not provide any guide lines to third parties how to test whether their chips are counterfeit or not. The only way to test it is trying to use it with FTDI's Windows driver, and FTDI randomly changes the both the detection criteria, and the action done on detecting a counterfeit chip – sometimes it bricks them, sometimes it sends gibberish, you have no way of knowing beforehand. FTDI doesn't even guarantee that this behaviour is deterministic!
- kefka 11y ago
  But that's the rub: FTDI doesn't have any good process to identify fake chips, other than "install it in your board and wait and see". And if you've tried ordering from FTDI themselves, they routinely have shortages and backlogs going from 3-6 months out. Meaning you lean on reputable places like Mouser or Digikey. And you also glossed over "FTDI compatible" chips. They too exist, and do not claim to be a legit FTDI (the markings on the case are what make a counterfeit, not the underlying silicon). Yet the FTDI driver disables them all, in one way or another. You assume I'm talking purely about the hobbyist market: anyone who pays for a usb FTDI adapter at $1.50 should know it's likely a counterfeit.
  - daphreak 11y ago
    3-6 months is not that bad. Especially if it means you can guarantee that you get genuine parts. Most real projects can easily handle this lead time for production.
    - DanBC 11y ago
      6 months would be tolerated for a hard to get specialist part - a particular connector that's made in smaller batches twice a year, perhaps. But for a normal part? It's lousy.
- kabdib 11y ago
  Frankly, I don't think about counterfeit chips. If I did, and had a meaningful way to determine a counterfeit, then I'd not buy products with them. But there's no way for an end-user to do this. And since they're the ones being punished by the bricking (any supply chain movement is a second-order effect driven by upset customers), and since I lack the technical capacity to identify a knock-off, then my most rational course of action is to avoid anything that might be counterfeit . . . by insisting on a totally different chip. Not having FTDI in your design is a feature. And that's easily checked by plugging the device into a USB port and looking at the VID/PID. FTDI has a death wish.
- leoedin 11y ago
  I've purchased what I thought was an industrial spec microcontroller board from a legitimate and respected supplier, through Farnell, and it had a counterfeit FTDI chip on it. I built that board into a piece of test equipment that's likely to be used for 5 or 10 years. Fortunately this whole saga happened while I was still developing it - if their chip bricking driver had been released a year later, I'd probably not have known about it. Someone would connect the test PC to Windows Update in 3 years time, and the device would stop working. Counterfeit chips are a reality, and not one that people building devices on a small scale can properly mitigate against. Not buying chips on alibaba is common sense, but not buying pre-built modules from Farnell? If you're not going to buy them from Farnell, where are you going to buy them from?
  - Tomte 11y ago
    I'm not disputing that you can easily get a counterfeit chip without it being your fault. But why do you simply accept that? Have you even complained to Farnell? Read the sundry web forums, very few people complain to their distributor. Everyone bitches about FTDI. And that's what's really bugging me here. In the FTDI case the problem has obviously gotten out of hand. I can totally understand that the manufacturer wants to get tougher.
    - raphman_ 11y ago
      The problem is that FTDI ist taking it out on the customer, and hoping that "the FTDI driver bricked my board" somehow gets those customers to (1) realize that the problem is a counterfeit chip, (2) work their way up the supply chain until they find the party at fault (or get the supply chain to take care of the problem), and (3) manage to get a replacement for the product which uses genuine FTDI chips. Why not just pop up a small window with a message "Hey, this product seems to contain counterfeit chips. Please tell us where you bought it so that _we_ can take care of the problem."
      - jnky 11y ago
        Just FYI, but displaying a Message Box from the context of a Windows device driver is not trivial and would add significant overhead to the driver. I'd prefer it if FTDI weren't utter douchebags around this whole ordeal. I understand they have to make money, but since when is it a problem when devices are API-compatible with existing device drivers? As far as I'm concerned, this is a rather common and generally beneficial thing.
- jdietrich 11y ago
  Nobody has total control over their supply chain. Substitution of counterfeit parts can happen at many points in the supply chain. Until resilient die-level traceability is universal, the best you can hope for is to minimise the risk. FTDI do not provide any useful traceability systems. Rather than providing their customers with a reliable means to identify genuine parts, they have hugely increased the risk posed to their customers by counterfeit parts. http://www.publicintegrity.org/2011/11/07/7323/counterfeit-chips-plague-pentagon-weapons-systems http://www.publicintegrity.org/2011/11/07/7323/counterfeit-c... http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/counterfeit-chips-on-the-rise http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/counterfeit-chip...
- drzaiusapelord 11y ago
  >Hobbyist electronics people are strange. Popular moralism in a nutshell. "I can steal from big companies because they're evil! But if someone even samples one of my songs I'm lawyering up!" There's something almost psychopathic about how people just rationalize amorality because the entity they're attacking from is "big" or "different" Or "the other." I guess the mp3 wars are over with Google Music, Spotify, Apple Music, etc but for a long time it was creepy to hear these justifications from otherwise normal adults. It made you think, "What if they see me and my interests as 'the other'? What would they do without a conscience to stop them?"
gsteinb88 11y ago
How reliable is the documentation for the ch340g? I don't have experience with Olimex directly, and for production designs I'm wary of datasheets that are translated this poorly -- while they frequently are just fine, i've run into numerous cases where the translation has either introduced ambiguity or is just plain incomprehensible. And that's the rub: if i get a legit ftdi chip, I have a high level of trust that it will do what it says, and there's tons of documentation.
- ArbitraryHobo 11y ago
  > I have a high level of trust that it will do what it says Even after seeing them pull a stunt like this in their drivers?
- tremon 11y ago
  And how will you know that you actually got a legit ftdi chip?
  - gsteinb88 11y ago
    I dont. I'm not defending FTDI's actions w/r/t their driver, just pointing out that ftdi does currently fill the market niche of "reliable, good usb-serial devices", and while I'd love for someone else to provide equivalent chips without the shit ftdi pulls, no one else has.
- baobrien 11y ago
  Cypress and Microchip also have USB-UART chips that cost less than FTDI's parts and are well documented. The CY7C65213 is even a pin-compatible replacement for the FT232R and shows up as a USB CDC device.
  - gsteinb88 11y ago
    Nifty, thanks. I've been lucky enough to be able to default to microcontrollers with usb-serial built in recently, but that's lookkng to be short lived...
analog31 11y ago
Are the CH340G drivers open source? I bought a pile of them, but have been skittish about installing one because I can't figure out where the drivers come from. Granted, knowing that FTDI's drivers come from FTDI doesn't prevent them from messing around with them, but still, the CH340G seems like more of a mystery.
- welterde 11y ago
  The datasheet does not seem to be very specific on what protocol it actually uses. It does however state it is software-compatible to CH341 and for that there is a linux driver[1]. [1] https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/usb/serial/ch341.c https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux....
- tyingq 11y ago
  For drivers other than Linux: The manufacturer's website is http://wch.cn http://wch.cn Their drivers are here: http://wch.cn/index.php?s=/page-search_content-keyword-USB%E8%BD%AC%E4%B8%B2%E5%8F%A3-type-50-p-2.html http://wch.cn/index.php?s=/page-search_content-keyword-USB%E... They don't appear to be open source, but I believe they are signed drivers for both Windows and OSX.

mkj 11y ago

Why do people need a FTDI driver, it appears that Windows has a USB Serial Class driver? https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/dn707976(v=vs.85).aspx https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/dn... At least on recent OSX the OS CDC one seems more robust than the FTDI provided one if you pull a cable while it's running. (I assume it's a genuine chip, who knows!)

creshal 11y ago
Windows 10 automatically installs FTDI's driver without asking the user, or giving the user the option to opt-out, or a way to downgrade to a working version of the driver. The best Windows ever keeps getting better; or something.
- drzaiusapelord 11y ago
  Those FTDI chips and clones only work with that driver. They aren't class compliant. What should Windows do here when a device gives the FTDI USB ID? Seems like its doing what it should.
  - Nullabillity 11y ago
    Use the old driver? At least give the user the option to keep using the old driver?
    - drzaiusapelord 11y ago
      Windows has driver roll-back built-in. Also, businesses typically use WSUS, where you need to intentionally whitelist driver updates. If you have a CNC machine set to get all Windows Update from MS without oversight and testing, well, you're doing it wrong. I suspect a lot of "GUISE MY CLIENTS ALL HAVE DOWNED MACHINES THIS MORNING" is straight-up bullshit. In my experience, CNC machines are sacred cows and never, ever updated, let alone ever get driver updates. Hell, it isn't even patch Tuesday. This does punish the hobbyist who just bought some toy and WU grabbed the latest driver. The world's manufacturing isn't going down this morning. Lets stop being naive.

andmarios 11y ago

It is time we get a meme with Richard Stallman saying “I told you so”.

arpa 11y ago
Wonderfully put.
pbhjpbhj 11y ago
https://imgflip.com/i/yedoi https://imgflip.com/i/yedoi ;0)>
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
  http://games.usvsth3m.com/javascript-under-pressure/stallman.gif http://games.usvsth3m.com/javascript-under-pressure/stallman...
kybernetyk 11y ago
> “I told you so”. That breaking a license and using software with hardware it wasn't ever intended to be used with might produce undefined behaviour? Don't get me wrong: It would be great if we had an open source FTDI driver. But putting the blame on FTDI for all the people effectively pirating their software isn't the way to go. If you are a stern supporter of Free/open source licenses you also need to accept other peoples' rights to license their work as they think is right. Because without a strong licensing framework GPL & co. don't work either.
- deelowe 11y ago
  Here we go again. The issue here is that it's really difficult to buy chips directly from FTDI. So.. you have to buy from a distributor. Those distributors also buy from 3rd parties, trade inventory, issue new old stock, etc... How can I, as consumer, be absolutely positive that that the "FTDI" chip in my device is genuine? I'll go ahead and answer that. I can't. Anyone who works in the electronics industry knows this. When everything is made in china, it's very hard to be sure that fakes don't end up where they shouldn't belong. Why do I bring this up? Because, last time they pulled this crap, reputable brand's products were damaged. Somehow some fakes ended up in their supply and those customers got screwed. OK, so sure, we can fix the supply chain, add expensive testing to the manufacturing process, buy direct from manufacturer, etc... or hey, I got a better idea. Let's just not buy FTDI any longer. That sounds much cheaper and less painful.

daphreak 11y ago

While I don't like that FTDI is pushing their brick-making drivers out over automatic updates, I think the folks calling for everyone to ditch their chips are a little over the top. Personally, I would love to have a reliable way to detect counterfeit chips. For FTDI I do! Now it is trivial to lot test my chips: Just put one (or a few depending on your level of quality) on a test jig and use the latest driver with it. Contrast that with one of these other generic pieces of silicon. Is the argument that since the drivers are generic it doesn't matter if counterfeits make it into your products? Of course it still matters! Every single datasheet value that you used in your design is now out the window. FTDI should absolutely be more forthcoming with their counterfeit detection process. It is going to be a tough call next time I need a USB-Serial chip. FTDI has a great product and documentation, but a future update might break my device if it used counterfeit components that were so far undetected.

raverbashing 11y ago
Sure, if you are willing to throw your money away because some driver thinks you have a "fake chip" so be it. Oh and it's not reliable because you might get one that's accepted by the current driver but gets bricked in the future
tw04 11y ago
The correct thing to do would be to throw the user a warning... not cause irrevocable harm. It's not going to stop the counterfeiters, it's just going to hurt legitimate customers. This would be akin to the government poisoning cocaine shipments with anthrax to try to stop the drugs from flowing in. You won't stop anything, you'll only hurt "innocent" people.
- tremon 11y ago
  No, not cocaine. That implies the end users are actually doing something socially undesirable. A better analogy would be the government enforcing an import ban by adding sugar to the petrol imported from specific countries.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

a2tech 11y ago

And the calls from my manufacturing clients are already beginning to roll in. Lots of expensive CNC machines are going to be idle this morning while local stores are raided for serial to USB adapters, tested, then returned.

mrob 11y ago

It is impossible to detect counterfeit chips electronically. The driver can only check if something produces signals that when interpreted as USB protocol indicate the FTDI PID/VID, but crucially it cannot know if this is the correct interpretation. That depends on the presence or absence of the trademarked USB logo on the device. It's entirely possible that the device has no USB logo, in which case it is not officially USB and the data the driver is interpreting as FTDI PID/VID could mean anything.

throwaway7767 11y ago
If the device doesn't have the USB logo, it means they didn't pay the USB implementors forum. There are plenty of devices which implement USB, but don't pay the license fees. It doesn't mean they just output garbage. I've also seen devices with the vaunted logo on them which failed spectacularly when it came to following USB specs. I'm not sure what point you're making regarding the infeasibility of detecting counterfeit chips. It's not like these chips were bricked by accident. FTDI is specifically going out of its way to exploit bugs in these clones to brick them. So it looks like they have the detection thing pretty well covered. You'll note that the opensource linux drivers works just as well with the clones. That's because they do not expend extra effort to make them not work.
- mrob 11y ago
  The point is it's possible to build something that does not use USB, but which uses an almost identical protocol differing only in the meanings of the PIDs/VIDs. If it's based off USB 1.0 then any patents have expired, and if you don't call it "USB" or "FTDI" there is no trademark violation. In that case you would be doing absolutely nothing wrong, but the FTDI driver would still falsely detect it as "counterfeit".
  - mrob 11y ago
    Not sure why I'm being downvoted here. In the USA, deliberately using counterfeit trademarks is a crime, not just a tort (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark_Counterfeiting_Act_of_1984 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark_Counterfeiting_Act_o... ). The standard for being found guilty of a crime is "beyond reasonable doubt", not just "preponderance of the evidence" as it would be for a tort. There is no way to electronically establish counterfeiting has occurred beyond reasonable doubt, because the completely legal scenario I described is electronically indistinguishable. It's not acceptable to go accusing people of crimes when you know you can't meet that standard of proof. EDIT: As a practical example, consider the case of I2C. This is a proprietary NXP protocol, and you have to pay to get slave addresses. So instead people use "Two Wire Interface", which is not I2C but is electronically indistinguishable. The only way to detect counterfeit use of I2C is looking at the packaging/documentation.

flashingleds 11y ago

If anyone out there is looking for alternatives, last time this happened I switched to the MCP2221 from microchip. It's been in about 6 hobby projects now and I'm very happy with it. Half the price in small quantities and easier to hand solder (14SO or even DIP vs 28TSSOP)

baobrien 11y ago
Cypress also has a bunch of USB UART chips, with comparable ones being about half the price of their FTDI equivalents.
noonespecial 11y ago
Bump for MCP2221. That's the one we ended up settling on. IMHO its cheaper, better, and easier to get in the small (100's) quantity we use them.
CountSessine 11y ago
Does it use a class CDC interface? Or does it require special drivers like the FTDI and Prolific chips? Are the drivers available for all OS's?
- CountSessine 11y ago
  Answering my own question, it looks like it's a plain-Jane CDC device, which seems to me like really great progress - now that we've put Windows XP behind us, these chips really should be using CDC rather than proprietary drivers.
ploxiln 11y ago
It's also worth mentioning that it uses the USB-CDC ("communications device class") standard driver, which is long supported/included in windows and linux and intended for use by arbitrary manufacturers. The situation is not unlike that of usb keyboard/mice which use the HID ("human interface device") standard driver (which MCP2221 apparently also supports). So there won't be any argument or shenanigans about whether any third-party chip should be allowed to be compatible with this commonly available driver.

headShrinker 11y ago

Recently I bought a 3D printer from China, and surprise, can't flash the Arduino chip. This was a bit of a set back but after a little googling, I found a work around and was backup and running. Here is the patch for anyone who's interested, http://kiguino.moos.io/2014/12/31/how-to-use-arduino-nano-mini-pro-with-CH340G-on-mac-osx-yosemite.html http://kiguino.moos.io/2014/12/31/how-to-use-arduino-nano-mi...

ohazi 11y ago

This is (still) a stupidly reckless approach to "addressing" the supply chain counterfeit problem. One of these days they're going to brick a pacemaker and kill someone. You have to be a special kind of delusional to think that the courts are going to care about your "good intentions" when you knowingly release a driver like this. And "pacemaker" is really a placeholder for any system that could end up affecting safety of life, regardless of whether it was intentionally designed to. How many of these FTDI chips do you suppose are on a 747? An elevator controller? A fire suppression system? A one-off alarm system at a power plant? A nuclear power plant? How many hoops do you have to jump through before you start to leave your comfort zone? Not many... A single lawsuit from a bad enough accident could end the company in one fell swoop. This should be a much bigger existential concern for FTDI than any amount of potential IP theft. If I were their general council, I would be looking for the vigilante engineer to sumarily fire, and put in place mechanisms to ensure that this never happens in the future.

noonespecial 11y ago
I think the damage is done and more subtle than a huge public disaster. When the fake-killer driver burst onto the scene previously, I just switched to microchip MCP2221's. It just wasn't worth the risk that I might accidentally source a counterfeit on a BOM and not find out until later. If it says FTDI on it, its now a no go. Just no way to be sure anymore.
- snvzz 11y ago
  So that the next person doesn't have to search for it: http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/DeviceDoc/20005292B.pdf http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/DeviceDoc/20005292B.pd...
- throwaway7767 11y ago
  Exactly. I switched to Cypress (CP2102) chips as a response to this, even though I haven't been hit with any of these tactics from FTDI yet. They work just great. Prolific (PL2303) work well too, but I've had some issues with high baud rates there so I avoid them. The fact is, it's impossible for me to know if an IC is genuine or not. Therefore, buying FTDI is now like playing russian roulette. If you got unlucky, you (or your customer) will have a nasty surprise, possibly years down the line. The rational choice is therefore to buy chips from manufacturers that don't do this.

ChuckMcM 11y ago

I can't say I'm feeling sorry for the counterfeiters. Now it sucks if you got suckered into thinking you had bought one thing and ended up with another, back when RAM was both expensive and in short supply(and Intel was still making it) it was not uncommon to have "grey market" RAM with Intel markings but substandard chips. It is always interesting to see the mechanics at play too, people who get counterfeit chips are more often (but not always) people who have released all "quality" requirements in order to achieve the lowest possible price. As being price preferred they put themselves at risk of getting substandard parts, and then when they get parts that don't work or work anomalously, they frame that problem as someone else's problem rather than their own choice. In the referenced forum post you have a person using "Chinese clone" Arduino nanos which happen to have chips on them that report as FTDI USB to serial converters but are in fact something else. So drop the vendor or have the vendor write their own USB driver for windows but why hate on FTDI for identifying the bogus chip and refusing to work with it?

bri3d 11y ago
Because they're breaking the consumer's experience, not the vendor's. I guess their assumption is that angry consumers will trickle up to the vendor and cause them to go "genuine," but that seems unlikely to me. Why? Because as a consumer, I have no way of knowing whether the FTDI product I'm buying is genuine. It adds risk to buying anything that says "FTDI" on it. I'm not going to vote with my wallet for some nebulous, unverifiable assertion that a chip will be real FTDI before I get it. I'm going to vote for something I know I can plug in and use. Already a lot of counterfeit users of FTDI (i.e. knockoff Arduinos and cheap "VAG-COM KKL" auto diagnostic cables) are switching to CH340 instead of buying real FTDI.
- ChuckMcM 11y ago
  I agree, and then the consumer decides it isn't worth buying the knock-offs, and the vendor switches to something which costs more than their counterfeit but isn't as expensive as the FTDI parts and we're back to competing above ground rather than below ground. I'm hoping we can train consumers to not buy things based on "lowest price" without understanding what was done to achieve that price.

5ilv3r 11y ago

Whatever is on the knockoff nanos now seems great. cg340 or something. 5 years ago I had a hell of a time trying to unlearn parallel port crap and figure out all the ftdi hype, aaand now I don't have to worry about it. Stupid move ftdi.

felhr 11y ago

Somedays ago discovered that my FT232 which I used to develop a FTDI user-space driver for Android is a counterfeit one. Ironically the feedback I've received about this project is mostly positive. I now have to test the Flow control and the parity/frame... signals so I hope I wont have to buy one. Before the 1st FTDIGate, as a guy who has implemented user-space drivers for the most common USB to serial converters my opinions about the FTDI were quite good (from an engineering standpoint I really like the solution they use to send the CTS,Parity status, Break... in a two bytes packet every 40ms which it is a good simulation of a serial port instead of having to poll sending control commands) but now I would recommend to avoid them. From my humble experience I would recommend CP2102, they work fine (and have a nice documentation for driver developers). The CH340/CH341 is real pain.