On Mon, 20 Oct 2008 08:32:44 -0700, jcarlyle wrote:

I just went through the exercise of finding a "good" USB to serial
converter. Talking with Larry Berg at pfranc.com, I found that he no
longer sells a USB to serial converter. Apparently the manufacturer
didn't want to improve the drivers, which Larry determined to be the
source of most problems. I also discovered that the Belken adapter is no
longer sold, so unless you can find a used one it isn't an option
anymore.

Thanks for letting us know. I looked at Larry's website immediately
before posting to see whether he was still selling serial converters.
They are still listed on his site.

I must admit I've only used his converter under Linux, so the driver
issue is a complete mystery to me. In Linux the USB serial converter
driver is a kernel plugin. This points up the question: if Linux can
include automatically selected drivers that work with all the chips you
mention and a lot more besides (41 drivers in total for Fedora 9), why is
it so hard for M$ to do the same or for the converter manufacturers to
supply just one decent driver for each Windows version?


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martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
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