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the thing is that building a work alike chip - one that speaks the same protocols, has the same pinout, (but a different USBID/part number)is perfectly OK - pri

by Taniwha 12y ago

the thing is that building a work alike chip - one that speaks the same protocols, has the same pinout, (but a different USBID/part number)is perfectly OK - price competition is good right? The vendors would have to write their own drivers but compared with the cost of spinning a chip that shouldn't be a big deal, if they'd come out and sold their chips on the open market as a clone they'd probably get a lot of business. Of course one of the weird things about ft232s is that they're non-standard USB devices (don't meet the ACM spec). If the cloners made ACM compatible chips they wouldn't need to write drivers since all OSs have them built in these days. Disclaimer: I build and sell open source USB boards, including serial devices (ACM, not ft232 compatible)

tmp26 12y ago
Price competition is great! The shady thing about the imitations is trying to insert themselves into someone else's supply & support chain, IMO. Which is probably tied to the reason they didn't implement the ACM spec- from my limited hobbyist view, FTDI is the dominant player, so of course they would chose to mimic the non-standard ft232 instead of some underdog ACM player. Oh, and as for costs, you're totally right that spinning a chip costs way more than a driver. But: - A theme as I learn about fly-by-night companies is they piggyback on other operations. As the article observes, this knockoff required only 1 mask layer, because the rest is probably a standard microcontroller. - Marketing & marketshare are probably the real reason, not getting out of writing drivers. Again, FTDI seems to be the entrenched player.
ash 12y ago
What serial devices are ACM-compatible? How to check for it? Are there any modern OS that don't support ACM? Wikipedia article [1] is making it seem like ACM is only for modems, not for generic serial devices. Am I wrong? Thank you! [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_communications_device_class http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_communications_device_class

by Taniwha 12y ago

tmp26 12y ago

Price competition is great! The shady thing about the imitations is trying to insert themselves into someone else's supply & support chain, IMO. Which is probably tied to the reason they didn't implement the ACM spec- from my limited hobbyist view, FTDI is the dominant player, so of course they would chose to mimic the non-standard ft232 instead of some underdog ACM player. Oh, and as for costs, you're totally right that spinning a chip costs way more than a driver. But: - A theme as I learn about fly-by-night companies is they piggyback on other operations. As the article observes, this knockoff required only 1 mask layer, because the rest is probably a standard microcontroller. - Marketing & marketshare are probably the real reason, not getting out of writing drivers. Again, FTDI seems to be the entrenched player.

ash 12y ago

What serial devices are ACM-compatible? How to check for it? Are there any modern OS that don't support ACM? Wikipedia article [1] is making it seem like ACM is only for modems, not for generic serial devices. Am I wrong? Thank you! [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_communications_device_class http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_communications_device_class