Prolific

[Richard Thorpe]

I just was told that the prolific drivers for the Mac on the elecraft website are obsolete. If this is true why are they still on the site? Checking Prolific website they show the same drivers, I don't understand and ask again how can one tell what USB to RS232 converter one has if the only drivers available on the elecraft site are for the prolific chipset?

K6CG
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[Jack Brindle]

Actually you can do it rather easily. Go to the Apple menu and select  
"About this Mac." Click on the "More Info" button. This will launch  
the System Profiler. In the Hardware list, select USB. You will then  
see the entire USB tree as the Mac sees it. Select the serial port  
entry and you will see the manufacturer's information which should  
either say Prolific or FTDI.

The Prolific drivers have been problematic since day 1, but Prolific  
does have working drivers at their site. There is also an open-source  
driver that handles the Proific chip very well. The pre-built drivers  
are available at the SourceForge site: http://sourceforge.net/projects/osx-pl2303/

Note, though that the pl2303 drivers are not compatible with the 64-
bit Mac Kernel. As far as I know Prolific has not released 64-bit  
drivers. I know that FTDI has released those and they run quite well.  
Since most of us do not need to run the 64-bit kernel this should not  
be a problem. As a side note, the Mac handles 64-bit applications  
quite well and does not need to run the kernel in 64-bit mode to do so.

Jack Brindle, W6FB



On Aug 24, 2010, at 11:45 AM, Richard Thorpe wrote:

> I just was told that the prolific drivers for the Mac on the  
> elecraft website are obsolete. If this is true why are they still on  
> the site? Checking Prolific website they show the same drivers, I  
> don't understand and ask again how can one tell what USB to RS232  
> converter one has if the only drivers available on the elecraft site  
> are for the prolific chipset?
>
> K6CG
> ______________________________________________________________
> Elecraft mailing list
> Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft
> Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
> Post: mailto:[hidden email]
>
> This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
> Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html

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