Fake and counterfeit chips & products are scourge of our industry. Their shady manufacturers put the customers at risk and put the original manufacturers in an impossible position. I don’t envy the position Prolific is in. Whatever we can do to put the fakers out of business is good!
Really Prolific?
11–20 of 61 posts
Re: Really Prolific?
#12Unless I'm misunderstanding, this isn't bricking the device. The driver is refusing to allow it to work, sure, but it doesn't damage the chip itself in any way. The reason the FTDI incident back in 2014 blew up was because the FTDI driver didn't just refuse to work - it reprogrammed the USB PID on counterfeit/cloned chips to 0, which actually prevented them from working on any host (looking back at articles from that…
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Re: Really Prolific?
#13MS should take away their keys.
that would set an inconvenient precedent for the future, when MS/Apple themselves start bricking your hardware for using unapproved software or failing to comply with Disinformation Governance Board regulations
Re: Really Prolific?
#14> PPS: In meantime, you can download the older driver (v3.8.39.0 worked for me) and use it instead. This implies that the fake IC isn't being bricked and will work with Linux, etc. after the new Windows driver has communicated with it. It appears the Windows driver refuses to communicate with the IC.
So unlike the FTDI driver that really did brick clone devices this could even be some change that inadvertently causes issues for third party clones. Do people expect them to QA against clones?
Given that the effect of using a clone is that the device name is replaced with the message "THIS IS NOT PROLIFIC PL2303. PLEASE CONTACT YOUR SUPPLIER.", it seems pretty clear that this is intentional sabotage.
Re: Really Prolific?
#15Fake and counterfeit chips & products are scourge of our industry. Their shady manufacturers put the customers at risk and put the original manufacturers in an impossible position. I don’t envy the position Prolific is in. Whatever we can do to put the fakers out of business is good!
> Whatever we can do to put the fakers out of business is good!
Not if it means hurting innocent third parties, who didn't know the chips were fake and now they're all in the field and not working.
Re: Really Prolific?
#16I believe macOS, Linux, and Windows now all come with standard CDC (USB Serial) drivers built-in, so typically there's no need to install drivers from FTDI, Prolific or anyone else. Or am I missing something here?
Re: Really Prolific?
#17MS should take away their keys.
I feel like they should do something. I’m not really sure what. Revoking the driver keys seems a little extreme but I’m not sure what else they would be able to do.
Re: Really Prolific?
#18MS should take away their keys.
I feel like they should do something. I’m not really sure what. Revoking the driver keys seems a little extreme but I’m not sure what else they would be able to do.
My suggestion: remove the malicious driver from Windows Update, push another update to all affected victims that puts them back on the old legitimate driver, and warn Prolific that if they ever do something like this again, that next time the consequence will be revocation.
Re: Really Prolific?
#19I'd just be happy to find a USB to RS-232 adapter using either a Prolific or FTDI chip that just worked. Even non-fake chips are famously flaky. It sort of blows my mind that the supposedly "better" serial evolution in USB can't even get RS-232 communication right. In my experience, it's best if the RS-232 communication is done on hardware as much as possible and then communicated to a computer with Ethernet or another device's actually usable USB driver than to rely on a Prolific or FTDI chip. Relying on these USB to RS-232 converters for anything other than desktop prototyping is a recipe for something not working.
Re: Really Prolific?
#20> For me the concept of bricking device owned by an unsuspected user is a bridge too far.
Its also highly illegal, in the EU, at least as far as I know.
(Assuming they brick instead of just block the device) It's destruction of the user property, nothing less.
If it's "just" deciding to make their driver not work with 3rd party devices then it's legal, though. But highly offensive anyway as even the producer of the device using the USB chip might not know they are using a potential copyright/patent infringing chip.