Arduino FTDI driver issue with Windows update

Or the letters of the alphabet (like "IBM", or "Intel", or more recently in the news here, "KC"). It's not the integer but the context in which it's used.

I got some USB-RS232 daughter boards for uC projects still sitting in their shipping package I got from an unnamed but well known source, they are either FTDI or FTDI compatibles, can't remember which. Maybe I should open the package and check?

I got them because at the time the price was right and thought they were a good thing to have around for interfacing the PC for uC projects. I suppose they should be marked with FTDI logos if they are authentic chips. Bit still, if they are willing to dup the software, what stops them from marking the chips as so marked?

Jamie

Under USB. (I only used the term 5 times above.)

Not the only victim.

Yeah, counterfeits suck.

That is not my argument. is it yours?

That's the first argument I've seen that FTDI could have handled this worse. I'm not accusing you of defending their actions, I'm just saying.

If the chip presents FTDI's device ID and then behaves other than like a genuine FTDI chip it is either defective or a fake. In either case the customer is probably protected by the waranty.

If the bits get corrupted on the wire that itself could damage the device. After all it is just bits on the wire that were used to disable those chips.

FTDI paid money to USB-IF for (among other benefits) a block of integers, USB-IF promised not to issue those integers to anyone else, nor permit anyone else using those integers to do so in conjunction with the USB logos (for which it holds trademark).

The way I read it they were pretty certain that they were't the source of the chips they disabled. contrary to the claims made by those chips. Also the USB commands they sent would have had no harmful effect on genuine FTDI chips.

The things I didn't say, I didn't say them.

Interesting, I did find my unopened package of these daughter boards and they do have the FTDI logo on them, so for now, we'll see how that plays out.

Thanks, Jamie

It's far from clear that FTDI even had the right to do that. The only legal significance of the PID is that FTDI had an agreement with USB-IF that the latter will not allocate that PID to anyone else.

FTDI don't have to take any particular care to avoid damaging hardware that responds with that PID, but they can't do so deliberately.

Sylvia.

I get the feeling that they are a flash CPU that's programmed via USB and uses the same USB interface to communicate with the host.

Unless there's a fuse bit, or jumper, that disables the flash programming mode there's little the counterfeiters can do to gain immunity.

If it was a mask MCU, the FTDI driver would not be able to update them.

Don't know anything about that. Mine have always worked well, including any fakes I may have. lol

They always go for a price premium too. Not that $15 is a lot for anything that works well. It costs more than that to think about it.

We will see.

With one small exception, FTDI was the one who broke the device... possibly illegally.

I'm asking. If you think it is ok for them to break some of your equipment, why some but not all?

You have very weird logic. So you feel that breaking user's stuff and deleting their IP is wrong? I'm not clear.

What warranty, FTDI's?

Really? I thought the FTDI code was doing the damage.

No where in there do I see damaging user's property.

"Pretty certain"? Lol. I'm pretty certain the gun wasn't loaded just before it went off.

Yeah, and many of the things you say make no sense.

I believe that page indicates the logos are printed on the fakes and laser etched on the real FTDI parts.

It is not "owned" at all. It is registered and the people using that registration agree not to make equipment with the same numbers as someone else.

Many MACs can be programmed in the field and it is not unheard of to do so. By your reasoning it would be ok for the registrant of that MAC address to trash the computer which is using "their" MAC address.

What problem does Prolific have? I have a number of Prolific devices and they all work with every driver I have used. It is only under Win 8 that the older devices won't work, not because there is a new driver, but because they aren't supported under Win 8. They still work perfectly under Win 7, Vista and XP.

Lol, they weren't evicted, they were beat about the head and shoulders and ordered to never return. The point is FTDI did damage to the devices. The fact that the damage can be repaired is not significant. If someone pours paint all over your car, but the paint can be washed off and buffed out, doesn't mean it wasn't damaged. The incidental damage of not being able to use the device may well be the worst of it like the loss of use of the car while being repaired.

There is at least some eeprom/flash in them, you can program in you own VID/PID (both real and fakes)

They didn't really "reprogram" the fakes, they just asked it to set the PID to zero, and differences in implementation meant only the fakes actually did it

-Lasse

Indeed, that is the question. I was not aware of problems with the prolific stuff until I read this thread; we use those too. Although tracking down the correct drivers always seemed a bit harder.

We use Prolific in bought-in serial "adapter cables", FTDI for building a USB port into equipment.

Why do manufacturers make it so hard to acheive such a simple function? (And why do FTDI cables cost ~$15 for a simple USB UART when I can get a

They don't care about how much our equipment costs, they might care how many chips they sell, but we put a $3 chip into a $10k box so our influence is negligible.

So I shall content myself with a rant on usenet...

They probably don't *have* any really big "end-user" customers, any such would make the effort to program their own microcontrollers and write their own drivers.

Really we use them out of lazyness (or a cost-benefit analysis of our time if you prefer). These days all the microcontrollers have USB hardware. So I suppose we should roll our own.

Actually you are "Big Jamie", according to your Web site. Is that a picture of you?

I *do* tread lightly, and I carry a big stick.

Besides, if they are able to detect a counterfeit device, the driver could just refuse to install it. Perfectly legal and equally effective.

Den mandag den 27. oktober 2014 19.07.25 UTC+1 skrev dalai lamah:

afaict they didn't detect that it was a counterfeit, they just did a sequen ce of writes that did nothing to the real device but changed the fakes.

i.e. hit it with a hammer if it breaks it was a fake, oopss

-Lasse

Not if the 'real' IC's keep working, *that* is what their driver is for.

On Mon, 27 Oct 2014 12:35:48 -0700 (PDT), Lasse Langwadt Christensen Gave us:

Can we try this with SkyBuck Interloping? :-)

I bet they knew some nondestructive way also, but they just went for the blood and didn't think this through. Maybe I'm wrong, but to me FTDI still appears as a very big and successful family business. I have some e-mails from 2002 where Fred Dart himself answered to my technical questions... :)

Probably the chain of command (and review...) is still a lot shorter than the usual chip manufacturers.