USB Converter Cables

[Cookie]

There certainly is a lot of comment about USB Converters.  I have a lot of recent experience with trying to make them work on my new HP Pavilion Desk Top with Windows 7.  I have had some disappointments but things seem to change every day. 

I have received several messages that the problem is when you try to use a Prolific chip based adapter with a program built in Visual Basic.  Several, if not all of the ham logging programs are written in Visual Basic.  The symptoms seem to be different in different applications.  The Prolific converter that I bought from Elecraft works fine with Windows 7 and the Elecraft firmware maintenance program after I uploaded the latest driver from Prolific.  It will receive data from XMlog but it will not send data from the K3 to the logging program.  It worked just fine with my previous XP Professional, Pentium IV computer.  My FTDI based WinKeyer USB with the latest FTDI driver would crash Windows about every hour or two as long as the Driver was enabled, whether XMLog was connected or not, whether the WinKeyer was connected or not.

I installed and activated a two port RS-232 board purchased from Tiger Direct and manufactured by Startech.com.  This uses a DB-9 connection to the K3 and seems to work fine for the Elecraft Software, XMlog and N1MM.  It does not seem to cause any trouble to any of my other applications or Windows 7.  Some day I will try Ham Radio Deluxe now that I have a computer big enough to handle it.

The problem with the FTDI driver seems to have mostly gone away.  I have a few reboots at night, but I attribute that to Microsoft trying to fix things and rebooting.  MS does fix things, but they don't announce it reliably, leaving you to guess what has happened.  It makes sense that they will do what they can to avoid the Blue Screen of Death that they have falsely promised would not accompany Windows 7.  They also will try to make Visual Basic work reliable with everything to protect their income stream.  I am sure they don't want Windows 7 to become the parieh that Vista has become.  They want us to give up on the idea that XP is the system to use for reliability.  So I have confidence that they will keep their 10,000 programmers busy trying to sort out the problems.  Abandoning all the Prolific chip based converters is an option, but not a good one for us or for Microsoft.

Unfortunately, it is a situation that is not controlled by ham radio operators or the vendors who serve us.  All we can do it to try to work through it and find work arounds or stay with XP.  I have confidence that we will be able to make Windows 7 work in time.  We have to because the source of support for XP is going away.  It is inevitable that some will have no difficulty at all and others with different software and application needs will have a great deal of trouble.  Willis 'Cookie' Cooke
K5EWJ


     
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[Don Wilhelm-4]

Interesting discussion.  I use only serial ports here because of the
potential driver problems, but as I read Cookie's comments, it reminded
me of a comment some time ago that the upgrade from XP is Ubuntu!  I
have since loaded Linux Mint (a Ubuntu derivative) on its own computer
and have been experimenting with it.  So far, it looks good, but I am
having trouble getting it to "Samba" in my Windows Home Network (I need
more education). Once that is an accomplished feat, I may be begging for
something like HRD and DM780 that works in Linux, but until that day, I
will have to have the WinXPpro computer as the hamshack computer.

73,
Don W3FPR

WILLIS COOKE wrote:
> There certainly is a lot of comment about USB Converters.  I have a lot of recent experience with trying to make them work on my new HP Pavilion Desk Top with Windows 7.  I have had some disappointments but things seem to change every day.  
>
> I have received several messages that the problem is when you try to use a Prolific chip based adapter with a program built in Visual Basic.  Several, if not all of the ham logging programs are written in Visual Basic.  The symptoms seem to be different in different applications.  The Prolific converter that I bought from Elecraft works fine with Windows 7 and the Elecraft firmware maintenance program after I uploaded the latest driver from Prolific.  It will receive data from XMlog but it will not send data from the K3 to the logging program.  It worked just fine with my previous XP Professional, Pentium IV computer.  My FTDI based WinKeyer USB with the latest FTDI driver would crash Windows about every hour or two as long as the Driver was enabled, whether XMLog was connected or not, whether the WinKeyer was connected or not.
>  
>
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[VR2BrettGraham]

To a computer, USB devices have vendor, product & revision IDs.

But we seem to differentiate them by chipset.

I'll bet that folks' experiences (good & bad) would make sense if
looked at from how the computer sees things...

73, ex-VR2BG/p.

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[Julian, G4ILO]

VR2BrettGraham wrote

To a computer, USB devices have vendor, product & revision IDs.

But we seem to differentiate them by chipset.

That's because most, if not all USB adapter vendors use generic drivers. When I look in Device Manager it says "Prolific USB to Serial Comm Port" and makes no mention of the vendor.

Linux manages with generic drivers that are actually compiled into the kernel, so no need to install anything (and curiously enough it doesn't seem to suffer from any of the problems experienced under Windows either.)