31–40 of 61 posts
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!
This worked very well for DVDs...
I'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 anoth…
Maybe you should go the path that the Arduino UNO and Mega use, and use an ATmega16U2 programmed to do just that. The code they use lives here: https://github.com/arduino/ArduinoCore-avr/tree/master/firmw...
https://www.ni.com/en-us/support/model.ni-9870.html
They go through an FPGA and then exposed via drivers over Ethernet or USB and are rock solid. You can access the serial data on the FPGA or you can use a default driver/personality for them that makes the module plug and play. There are other products I've used that expose RS-232 over Ethernet or fiber that work decently well.
There's also the Pmod interface:
https://digilent.com/reference/pmod/pmodrs232/start
I'll take a look at what you linked. I have often thought about doing something in this area, because it's amazing how reliable serial communication over RS-232, RS-422, and RS-485 can be, within their operation constraints.
I am going to defend Prolific here and say they are probably doing the right thing. I use FTDI, Prolific, and other similar serial adapters on a daily basis and Chinese ripoffs are a problem. I want to know right away if the device I bought is a fake.
The people selling the devices, usually Chinese vendors on Aliexpress or Amazon, DON'T CARE that they are selling fakes, and probably even know they are selling fakes.
The only way Prolific can get these guys to stop is to get the end-user pissed off enough to do returns and leave negative reviews. Aliexpress sure isn't going to take their listings down, and Amazon has proven they don't care either (actually they demand bribes to take fake merch down).
Josip's anger is misdirected. He bought a cheap fake chip, knows it, and wants his free ride.
Why is it technically possible for Microsoft to update drivers without user consent? This is a deliberate RCE vulnerability with kernel privileges.
I think you answered your own question right there.
Unless 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…
That's kind of immaterial, isn't it? Like most end users won't know how to roll back a driver in the device manager, and without that knowledge their device is as useful to them as one which was actually bricked.
Why is it technically possible for Microsoft to update drivers without user consent? This is a deliberate RCE vulnerability with kernel privileges.
Unless 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…
The problem is that you have no way of knowing that you are buying a fake device. If you run the risk of buying a fake and having it not work then why buy that brand? Buy one that will just work and no risk of bricked fakes. Prolific are harming their brand by doing this. I will now be on alert to avoid their products. Not because I take moral issue with them not allowing me to use fakes, but because I risk getting a…
The better option is to find ways to ensure you are buying legitimate items, such as avoiding Amazon, eBay, AliBaba, etc.
Unless 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…
> Prolific just doesn't have any obligations to the end-users of other manufacturers' chips To me, this would excuse a change that was actually somehow beneficial for their own chips and just happened to break clones, but it doesn't excuse a change that does nothing for their own chips and breaks clones on purpose.
Write your own driver if you want to use the clones. It is not Prolific’s job to support hardware they didn’t design, build and test.
Even more importantly it is not Prolific’s job to support competitors who are not going to respect Prolific’s IP.