ricortes Posted October 24, 2014 Share Posted October 24, 2014 (edited) While I don't condone what FTDI did, I can understand it. Using the FTDI PID to impersonate fake devices so the FTDI drivers will work while perpetrating the outright fraud of faking logos on the chips to look like genuine parts is pretty gross: Sales loss to fake chips, reputation, ... There is no loss of irony here. Specifically if the community responded proactively it would be no more then a speed bump. Cloud funding to raise the $5000 to get a VID/PID pair and the use of an open source driver. *OR* Just switch devices. I haven't looked lately but I'm pretty sure there are tons of micro controllers that offer both serial and USB built in. I don't think there is any magic here in a lot of these devices, just an 8051 type controller. The market identified a need for a serial to usb dongle. This was further refined to an inexpensive serial to USB dongle for price sensitive devices. FTDI does not service that market segment. http://www.atmel.com/products/microcontrollers/8051architecture/usb_mcus.aspx What is fresh right now is I just spent a small fortune on giga Hertz op amps for a goofy project I have going. It was a minimum order thing where I had to buy 30 to get the one I needed. I figured I could always sell the extras to people who wanted to build the project or just fleabay them. Where this relates to FTDI: At this stage I would never attempt to do the same thing FTDI chips because legitimate chips bought from legitimate vendors will now be suspect in everyone's eyes. I may be alone here but I don't give a rats ass about FTDI logo being on a chip in spite of their reputation for quality. Open market with a low price point and open source drivers works for me. We just need a young lion to step forward and run the campaign. I'd bet their are at least 5,000 hackers that use the chips who would rather get a device like that and kick back $1 of the $10 they save per device. Edited October 24, 2014 by ricortes Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atari8warez Posted October 24, 2014 Share Posted October 24, 2014 I could probably easily do the same with a Prolific or CPC USB->RS232 chip. In fact, there's cheap breakout boards for them too in the sub-$5 range. Prolific suffer from the same problem as FTDI, there are a lot of cheap Prolific clones out there with sub-standard quality. I know cause I own one of these too, could no longer find a driver for it and had a hell of a hard time to find a working one for my XP machine. No matter what device you use these chips for, it always pays to buy the REAL one. I no longer purchase cheap Chinese imitations of important chips. And none of those cheap FTDI clones ever find their way into my SIO2PC/10502PC Dual-USB device. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atari8warez Posted October 24, 2014 Share Posted October 24, 2014 Basically, if it's a device made by someone other than FTDI and certainly not OWNED by FTDI, what right does FTDI have to break it? I can see having the driver reject the fakes but anything more than that is destruction of private property. Destroying them is a bit over the top I must admit (if that's what FTDI actually does). I would actually like to see that happen, I still have one of those fake chips at hand, must try it Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
charliecron Posted October 24, 2014 Share Posted October 24, 2014 I guess I don't understand why people fart around with these things. Whats so hard about throwing a honest to goodness serial card in your box. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atari8warez Posted October 24, 2014 Share Posted October 24, 2014 How unsurprising, that you'd take this viewpoint. IP is **exactly** the point. If you don't think that FTDI had "IP" in mind when they concocted this fiasco, you're completely clules. IP is the point, consequnces be damned. The ENTIRE POINT is that - since everything comes from China anyway - it's poor practice to "brick." the device. Sure, it can be recovered (in some or most cases) by an extremely-small segment fo the population, but for most people, it's "bricked." An enormous number of consumers likely had no idea about this. Likewise, and enormous number of unscrupulous vendors likely used these "counterfit/repo/whatever) for their own Financial.Gain. The story still holds true.... you get what you pay for....... never heard that? If you haven't , you'd better start studying Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atari8warez Posted October 24, 2014 Share Posted October 24, 2014 (edited) "a lot of those damn fakes don't work properly and FTDI has to deal with RMAs" That seems like FTDI's issue really. If they are providing RMA's then they are at fault for that not anyone else. If would be like Samsung taking an RMA for an iPhone. Most companies ask for proof of purchase on a return/RMA, no proof no RMA, pretty simple. No they don't provide RMA for products that are not of their manufacture, but have to deal with a flood of questions and need to analyze chips sent to them for RMA to determine if it's one of their genuine chips. This takes a lot of time and manpower. I had to go through that channel too to verify that some of the chips I bought were indeed counterfeit and had to wait for days to get an answer. They don't need to deal with any of that BS, neither do I as a device manufacturer. Edited October 24, 2014 by atari8warez Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted October 24, 2014 Share Posted October 24, 2014 I guess I don't understand why people fart around with these things. Whats so hard about throwing a honest to goodness serial card in your box. Because laptops don't come with serial ports anymore and the adapters are a lot more affordable than the few serial cards available. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ricortes Posted October 24, 2014 Share Posted October 24, 2014 I guess I don't understand why people fart around with these things. Whats so hard about throwing a honest to goodness serial card in your box. I'm with Bryan on this one. Lots of what we consider standards and modern technology are being abandoned. You could say the serial to USB chips *are* an honest solution. A good example would be a thread I just read. A poster wanted to know if hot plugging a USB printer on two different computers was OK. Several of the responses were ~USB printing is obsolete, switch to WiFi printer and stop plugging stuff in. Sort of ditto for Ethernet printers. Unless you need the Ethernet bandwidth i.e. a large block of users that share a single printer WiFi is a good solution. There is a trend towards fewer chips, higher integration, fewer conductors and cables, that can't be fought. It is the Borg of market place. No more 40 pin IDE cables and 36 conductor printer cables. We see it here too in that a lot of people prefer smaller and easier solutions then having an old desktop with a CGA monitor running under DOS and using Nick Kennedy's original SIO2PC software. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+David_P Posted October 24, 2014 Share Posted October 24, 2014 CGA? Bah, humbug. No one needs better than a Hercules card. With beeps from the speaker - AdLib cards are a tool of the devil! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted October 25, 2014 Share Posted October 25, 2014 No one needs better than a Hercules card. Monitors are for wimps! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+David_P Posted October 25, 2014 Share Posted October 25, 2014 Bah. Silicon? We used to dream of having silicon! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kogden Posted October 25, 2014 Author Share Posted October 25, 2014 (edited) I guess I don't understand why people fart around with these things. Whats so hard about throwing a honest to goodness serial card in your box. Why would you bother with an Atari 850 instead of wirewrapping your own PBI serial controller? And using a "honest to goodness" serial controller takes more effort, the FT232RL is a true "one chip SIO2PC" solution. To use a standard RS232 port requires level shifting, etc. The FTDI FT232RL really is an excellent chip and I've had no issues with ANY FTDI-based USB->serial solutions I've used. And I use many in my line of work as I deal with gas pumps and old POS systems a lot. The PL2303 adapters have been much more problematic. USB is the modern version of SIO. Edited October 25, 2014 by kogden Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kogden Posted October 25, 2014 Author Share Posted October 25, 2014 Monitors are for wimps! Actually, most Altair users that were serious plugged in a serial terminal and used it as a console. A year or two later graphics cards were available for the "S100 bus" that actually supported higher resolutions and in some cases more color than the Atari. The Altair was only like $500 but by the time you put together a truly usable computer it was more like $2,000+. Altair machines would happily run CP/M with appropriate hardware. Most of the computers with cool switch-laden front panels only used them for initial booting or debugging. A terminal/teletype was used for actual interaction. This includes the PDP-8/e, arguably the first "personal computer" but a bit out of reach for most home users without $20,000-$50,000 to spend. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shawn Jefferson Posted October 25, 2014 Share Posted October 25, 2014 Bah. Silicon? We used to dream of having silicon! Cool, and even portable! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
charliecron Posted October 25, 2014 Share Posted October 25, 2014 Here is my "one chip" sio2pc solution. 1489. Like a boss. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BillC Posted October 25, 2014 Share Posted October 25, 2014 Here is my "one chip" sio2pc solution. 1489. Like a boss. That adapter only works with computers having an RS232 compatible port, it's useless for any computer without one which is most current computers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
a8isa1 Posted October 25, 2014 Share Posted October 25, 2014 Here is my "one chip" sio2pc solution. 1489. Like a boss. That's almost pop art! Probably is here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CPUWIZ Posted October 25, 2014 Share Posted October 25, 2014 FTDI back paddled, they had Microsoft remove the driver from the update and replaced it with one that simply renders fakes non-functional, instead of bricking them. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CPUWIZ Posted October 25, 2014 Share Posted October 25, 2014 They tried to slip this into Linux as well, maybe you'll get a chuckle out of this one... https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/10/23/129 Read "Greg KH's" response. LMAO 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kyle22 Posted October 25, 2014 Share Posted October 25, 2014 What I need is the M$ KB number of that update so I can block it completely from ever being downloaded or installed. I can easily modify my code in the XP 2019 program to block that one as well as the one I already block. (The MSE update that turns it red). I will release it as a stand-alone program and post it here. Google has turned up nothing so far as the KB number goes... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CPUWIZ Posted October 25, 2014 Share Posted October 25, 2014 AFAIK, it does not exist anymore. Or are you talking about the new change, with the blocking code in it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kyle22 Posted October 25, 2014 Share Posted October 25, 2014 I would like the KB number of ANY update that disturbs these FTDI clone chips. As long as they are working, LEAVE THEM ALONE. It is NOT the end-users fault that they have that chip. I am trying to protect my customers and everyone. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phaeron Posted October 25, 2014 Share Posted October 25, 2014 They tried to slip this into Linux as well, maybe you'll get a chuckle out of this one... https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/10/23/129 Read "Greg KH's" response. LMAO Wow. Up until now I was just watching this unfold with amusement, but I think now I might have to go out of my way to avoid FTDI-based hardware. With the Windows driver, they were shipping this code in their own software, with their own license warranting functionality only with their own hardware. Adding this code to Linux means adding this code to software owned and distributed by other people, exposing them to liability. The patch doesn't note this in the source or even update documentation with any warnings about issues with non-FTDI hardware, which at this point is known to be affected. This is pretty irresponsible, and frankly the linux-kernel group reacted a lot more calmly to this patch than I probably would have if I had been passed this for code review. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madi Posted October 25, 2014 Share Posted October 25, 2014 (edited) What I need is the M$ KB number of that update so I can block it completely from ever being downloaded or installed. I can easily modify my code in the XP 2019 program to block that one as well as the one I already block. (The MSE update that turns it red). I will release it as a stand-alone program and post it here. Google has turned up nothing so far as the KB number goes... For WIN 8.1 x64, I found only 2 installed updates related to windows system update (not security updates) on my computer: 1. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2995388 Installed (21OCT2014) October 2014 update rollup for Windows RT 8.1, Windows 8.1, and Windows Server 2012 R2. But no mentioning to FTDI drivers.. Please check this one. 2. There is another update but has no update number and has no information whatsoever (22OCT2014) for: Synaptics - Other hardware - Synaptics PS/2 Port TouchPad I am sure that MS had stopped updating WIN-XP. All updates are related to products other than Windows systems ( i.e. MS office 2007 and later versions), MS visual studio, etc. Note:I have just checked all FTDI related files in my computer, and I did not find any was added/modified after 16SEP2014. Edited October 25, 2014 by Madi Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
charliecron Posted October 25, 2014 Share Posted October 25, 2014 That adapter only works with computers having an RS232 compatible port, it's useless for any computer without one which is most current computers. Presto Change-O! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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