I would find it really curious if you were really their customer. Most likely all you did was chuck reels of off-eBay fakes, so good for you on that. I've been a FTDI customer for more than a decade. Somehow I never had that sort of a problem, but then I buy from distributors who get their parts straight from FTDI. Not some nebulously-defined "reputable" vendors, but vendors who actually have paper trail that backs their assertion as to the source of the parts. You know, the professionals in the business, not Chuck's eBay store.
regular supply chain, I can only go off the label I don't have magic vision
Maybe if your "regular" supply chain is eBay or Alibaba...
Buy them from DigiKey, or ELFA/Distrelec in Europe, and you're set. You won't get fakes. It's that simple.
They do leave me wanting a premium product
What on Earth are you ranting about? Where do you buy your parts from? Street corner? If your "source" is compromised with fakes, how do you know that you're not getting SiLabs or TI fakes? Get real. You're doing something very, very wrong, and it's got zilch to do with FTDI.
I don't believe that any of the major U.S. distributors ever sold fake FTDI chips. I buy at least a hundred every a month, and I've not had one fake one, ever. And I do buy at the cheapest price I can find among the big vendors (DigiKey, Avnet, Mouser, Allied, Newark).
You're not authorized to use the FTDI driver with a knock-off chip. Don't use their driver. It's that simple. "Doctor, it hurts when I do that" Well, fucking don't do it, then! FTDI is not trying to tell you what chips to use or not. If you want to use fakes: great! Program them to your own VID/PID, use whatever driver you wish, and be merry!
They don't police their components, they police their drivers. I use their Windows driver with their own chips, and guess what: it works. People who use fakes are not their customers. Everyone who has time to argue that, somehow, FTDI did a wrong thing here, is not their customer.
All I hear is a bunch of cheap makers who'll buy whatever and then bitch that they were scammed. Live and learn, people, but don't blame FTDI for your troubles. If you're buying a board with an FTDI chip that comes from China, you're getting a fake. It's that simple. It's your choice. If you want the genuine thing, get a PropPlug from Parallax. Yeah, there's a reason that the knock-off USBSerial converters sell for less than FTDI chips do in qty 1000.
The CH340 is basically a collective delusion. There's no single vendor, no support of any kind, the datasheet(s) are a joke, and generally you don't know what the heck you're getting. The telltale sign is that no common distributor is even listing that chip. You won't find it on DigiKey, Mouser, Newark, Allied nor Avnet. Generally speaking, if something isn't offered on any of these sites, you should be very suspicious. If it's a popular part, like a USBUART bridge, then it not being offered is a guarantee that you'll be scammed. If you're a professional, offering a product based on CH340, you should be ashamed.
The maker community is living in some sort of a fantasy where nobody cares where their parts come from. The "genuine" CH340 chips are as good as the FTDI fakes. For all I know, they come from the same factory, and are all worth about just as much.
The RS232 standard doesn't call for +/-12V signaling. MAX232 is standards compliant, as long as the receiver is. Any receiver that uses off-the-shelf RS-232 level translator chips, even 30 year old ones, will interoperate properly with MAX232.
I think you're barking up the wrong tree. The most problem is with Windows applications that are written with absolutely no understanding of how asynchronous communication code is to be written. They are "tested" to work in a very narrow range of circumstances, and often will fail when properly tested even on UARTs attached directly to the PCI bus.
There's no real support for the CH340. The datasheet for it is someone's sad joke. You can't even tell who the manufacturer is, for all we know there's several, and no single chip design either. Anyone using this chip is nuts, as is the Arduino community for even giving it a passing glance. That chip was someone's joke that people who don't know any better snatched up as if it was for real. It's a big whoosh.
The MCP2221 is a sensible alternative. Just make sure you either buy directly from Microchip, or from a distributor that gets it directly from them.
I've been buying thousands of FT232 chips from DigiKey over the years. I've used the -A, -B and -RL variants. Guess what? None of them were fakes.
If you buy "FTDI" devices from eBay or Alibaba, you get fakes. If you buy them from distributors who get them directly from FTDI, you won't ever have a problem. Where the heck do people think that raw FT232 chips appear on eBay, especially if they are cheaper than at DigiKey etc? It's really simple: there's such demand for these chips that there's no surplus, any eBay "finds" are fakes. That's all there's to it. I don't understand how supposedly intelligent people get had so easily. I have no sympathy for them because they are not FTDI customers. They can use their own drivers, thank you very much.
And I'm a guy who hate's the "quality" of FTDI's driver development, but not for that reason. Their non-Windows libUSB-based "driver" is a standing fucking joke. They should be ashamed of that pile of crap.
This is true, but it relates to GMO concerns, not to fixing mutations that cause genetic diseases. In generic diseases, we know exactly what's broken, and we know that fixing it won't break anything either: after all, the rest of us, who don't suffer from the mutation, have the "fix" already!
I have the robotics kit, but the interface board was for a PC. These days all you need for an "interface" is an Arduino and a motor driver shield, and you can probably buy it locally in a store catering to hobbyists.
a device that could potentially eventually produce a particle that could turn our planet into a blob of stranglets
Potentially you could stop writing catastrophic nonsense, too.
a tone generator would make the job far easier
This is the least of your concerns. If you can merely safely access both ends of the cable, that's already a big win. Remember that different cables go between different locations, and some of these locations are unsafe to access during operation, some of them are unsafe to access at any time due to presence of radioactive dust, and many teams keep different things inaccessible at various times for all sorts of reasons. You're basically assuming problems that aren't there. They have mounds of documentation detailing the routing of these cables. The cables do have identifiers, and I can state this quite categorically. This is CERN bureaucracy, they sometimes serialize their pencils for all I know.
The "have to identify" phrase is simply sensationalistic wording. They can point to each of these cables on the plans, they know what labels they have, that's not an issue. The issue is to physically get to the ends of each cable run and find them among everything else that's there, without breaking any rules and without disrupting anything where downtime can cost a thousand Euros per second.
Given that all motion is relative, the statement that something cannot be moved is nonsense. It has no meaning. It's like saying "The world is firmly established; it wakalixes."
That's correct. The place is filled with such a strong magical field that the light travels through it like a fly through molasses. Just this day I had to pay to renew the countercurses on my PC's motherboard; the communication delays prevented it from even booting. Alas, the wife's iPhone is suspiciously unaffected. I wonder what kind of pacts did late Mr. Jobs sign, and when do they expire.
Heck, If I put my cynic's hat on, I think that the whole purpose of the website was to be "hacked" and blackmail members for even more money... How do we know that the owners have clean hands here? They were out to defraud their customers from day one, I would not be surprised at all if it wasn't a hack but a ruse to milk the customers.
My and my wife have had a civil marriage in Europe and there was nothing in the legalese we had to recite about maintaining a monogamous relationship. Literally nothing.
Note the "inducing the other person to act" and "resulting injury or damage."
Leading someone on in a marriage that is built on rules that you're purposefully breaking is both inducing the other person to act and does result in clear injury/damages. Utter fucking nonsense back at ya.
Slashdot Mirror
I would find it really curious if you were really their customer. Most likely all you did was chuck reels of off-eBay fakes, so good for you on that. I've been a FTDI customer for more than a decade. Somehow I never had that sort of a problem, but then I buy from distributors who get their parts straight from FTDI. Not some nebulously-defined "reputable" vendors, but vendors who actually have paper trail that backs their assertion as to the source of the parts. You know, the professionals in the business, not Chuck's eBay store.
Yeah, because adding a "you've been had" (essentially) string into the data will surely pass a simple CRC check every time... Umm, sure.
It doesn't brick anything the driver is designed to work with, and licensed for! I don't see the problem.
regular supply chain, I can only go off the label I don't have magic vision
Maybe if your "regular" supply chain is eBay or Alibaba...
Buy them from DigiKey, or ELFA/Distrelec in Europe, and you're set. You won't get fakes. It's that simple.
They do leave me wanting a premium product
What on Earth are you ranting about? Where do you buy your parts from? Street corner? If your "source" is compromised with fakes, how do you know that you're not getting SiLabs or TI fakes? Get real. You're doing something very, very wrong, and it's got zilch to do with FTDI.
I don't believe that any of the major U.S. distributors ever sold fake FTDI chips. I buy at least a hundred every a month, and I've not had one fake one, ever. And I do buy at the cheapest price I can find among the big vendors (DigiKey, Avnet, Mouser, Allied, Newark).
You're not authorized to use the FTDI driver with a knock-off chip. Don't use their driver. It's that simple. "Doctor, it hurts when I do that" Well, fucking don't do it, then! FTDI is not trying to tell you what chips to use or not. If you want to use fakes: great! Program them to your own VID/PID, use whatever driver you wish, and be merry!
They don't police their components, they police their drivers. I use their Windows driver with their own chips, and guess what: it works. People who use fakes are not their customers. Everyone who has time to argue that, somehow, FTDI did a wrong thing here, is not their customer.
All I hear is a bunch of cheap makers who'll buy whatever and then bitch that they were scammed. Live and learn, people, but don't blame FTDI for your troubles. If you're buying a board with an FTDI chip that comes from China, you're getting a fake. It's that simple. It's your choice. If you want the genuine thing, get a PropPlug from Parallax. Yeah, there's a reason that the knock-off USBSerial converters sell for less than FTDI chips do in qty 1000.
The CH340 is basically a collective delusion. There's no single vendor, no support of any kind, the datasheet(s) are a joke, and generally you don't know what the heck you're getting. The telltale sign is that no common distributor is even listing that chip. You won't find it on DigiKey, Mouser, Newark, Allied nor Avnet. Generally speaking, if something isn't offered on any of these sites, you should be very suspicious. If it's a popular part, like a USBUART bridge, then it not being offered is a guarantee that you'll be scammed. If you're a professional, offering a product based on CH340, you should be ashamed.
The maker community is living in some sort of a fantasy where nobody cares where their parts come from. The "genuine" CH340 chips are as good as the FTDI fakes. For all I know, they come from the same factory, and are all worth about just as much.
The RS232 standard doesn't call for +/-12V signaling. MAX232 is standards compliant, as long as the receiver is. Any receiver that uses off-the-shelf RS-232 level translator chips, even 30 year old ones, will interoperate properly with MAX232.
I think you're barking up the wrong tree. The most problem is with Windows applications that are written with absolutely no understanding of how asynchronous communication code is to be written. They are "tested" to work in a very narrow range of circumstances, and often will fail when properly tested even on UARTs attached directly to the PCI bus.
There's no real support for the CH340. The datasheet for it is someone's sad joke. You can't even tell who the manufacturer is, for all we know there's several, and no single chip design either. Anyone using this chip is nuts, as is the Arduino community for even giving it a passing glance. That chip was someone's joke that people who don't know any better snatched up as if it was for real. It's a big whoosh.
The MCP2221 is a sensible alternative. Just make sure you either buy directly from Microchip, or from a distributor that gets it directly from them.
can accidentally buy the knockoffs
I've been buying thousands of FT232 chips from DigiKey over the years. I've used the -A, -B and -RL variants. Guess what? None of them were fakes.
If you buy "FTDI" devices from eBay or Alibaba, you get fakes. If you buy them from distributors who get them directly from FTDI, you won't ever have a problem. Where the heck do people think that raw FT232 chips appear on eBay, especially if they are cheaper than at DigiKey etc? It's really simple: there's such demand for these chips that there's no surplus, any eBay "finds" are fakes. That's all there's to it. I don't understand how supposedly intelligent people get had so easily. I have no sympathy for them because they are not FTDI customers. They can use their own drivers, thank you very much.
And I'm a guy who hate's the "quality" of FTDI's driver development, but not for that reason. Their non-Windows libUSB-based "driver" is a standing fucking joke. They should be ashamed of that pile of crap.
Good points!
This is true, but it relates to GMO concerns, not to fixing mutations that cause genetic diseases. In generic diseases, we know exactly what's broken, and we know that fixing it won't break anything either: after all, the rest of us, who don't suffer from the mutation, have the "fix" already!
I have the robotics kit, but the interface board was for a PC. These days all you need for an "interface" is an Arduino and a motor driver shield, and you can probably buy it locally in a store catering to hobbyists.
a device that could potentially eventually produce a particle that could turn our planet into a blob of stranglets
Potentially you could stop writing catastrophic nonsense, too.
a tone generator would make the job far easier
This is the least of your concerns. If you can merely safely access both ends of the cable, that's already a big win. Remember that different cables go between different locations, and some of these locations are unsafe to access during operation, some of them are unsafe to access at any time due to presence of radioactive dust, and many teams keep different things inaccessible at various times for all sorts of reasons. You're basically assuming problems that aren't there. They have mounds of documentation detailing the routing of these cables. The cables do have identifiers, and I can state this quite categorically. This is CERN bureaucracy, they sometimes serialize their pencils for all I know.
The "have to identify" phrase is simply sensationalistic wording. They can point to each of these cables on the plans, they know what labels they have, that's not an issue. The issue is to physically get to the ends of each cable run and find them among everything else that's there, without breaking any rules and without disrupting anything where downtime can cost a thousand Euros per second.
That... that guy has some good ideas. Where do I subscribe to your pamphlets?
Comedy gold, right here.
Given that all motion is relative, the statement that something cannot be moved is nonsense. It has no meaning. It's like saying "The world is firmly established; it wakalixes."
Yeah, I mean the stuff up there goes in circles, so what's the big deal with some GPS birds :)
That's correct. The place is filled with such a strong magical field that the light travels through it like a fly through molasses. Just this day I had to pay to renew the countercurses on my PC's motherboard; the communication delays prevented it from even booting. Alas, the wife's iPhone is suspiciously unaffected. I wonder what kind of pacts did late Mr. Jobs sign, and when do they expire.
It's interesting how this will interact with the opposite happening in China... Will we literally have a modern kidnapper's war again?
You are using a very unconventional interpretation of "50% more".
No, you've just lived a very sheltered life it seems. FTFY.
Heck, If I put my cynic's hat on, I think that the whole purpose of the website was to be "hacked" and blackmail members for even more money... How do we know that the owners have clean hands here? They were out to defraud their customers from day one, I would not be surprised at all if it wasn't a hack but a ruse to milk the customers.
Wow, a voice of reason. Well done!
My and my wife have had a civil marriage in Europe and there was nothing in the legalese we had to recite about maintaining a monogamous relationship. Literally nothing.
Note the "inducing the other person to act" and "resulting injury or damage."
Leading someone on in a marriage that is built on rules that you're purposefully breaking is both inducing the other person to act and does result in clear injury/damages. Utter fucking nonsense back at ya.