PL2303 serial adapters

bob prohaska · 2016-06-16T01:08:51+00:00

I'm trying to use PL2303TA-based USB-serial adapters between RaspBerry Pi model 2's. Out of four, two work fine and two fail every few hours. They drop off the USB and simply aren't recognized. If they're plugged into an OSX Mac running Prolific's drivers they "come back to life" in the RPi2's for a few hours, then lock up again. When locked, they're electrically stuck. Even pulling them out and plugging them back in doesn't wake them up. Has anybody seen behavior like this with Raspian or any other OS on the Pi? Since two devices work and two are flaky I'm tempted to think the problem is the adapters, but the fact that exposing them to Prolific's drivers makes the problem go away for a while clouds the issue in a big way. Maybe it's some sort of configuration issue. Thanks for reading, and any counsel! bob prohaska

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mm0fmf 10 years ago

It's nothing to do with MS or W10. It's all to do with Prolific. Prolific no longer support the 2303. Existing drivers still work. On W10 you get the new driver by default which doesn't support the 2303 but does support the newer hardware. If you uninstall and install a older driver then that driver will get replaced by the latest driver during the next Windows Update.

It's Prolific's decision not to support their old devices (and counterfeits) on W10. If you have a beef, then take it up with Prolific.

I'm sure you can spin the fact that all sorts of bottom feeders in China were ripping off Prolific (and FTDI) by counterfeiting the devices and both company's reactions to this as MS's fault. Go on, you know you want to!

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Folderol 10 years ago

Actually, you couldn't be more wrong. I was quite unaware of this.

W J G

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mm0fmf 10 years ago

Not on the W10 Home editions. I think you can do more on W10 Pro but for effective management you need the Enterprise version. Enterprise is the version business should use as updates et al. are controlled by group policy.

I only found this out when doing a check for a customer. It's not a big issue for me as I can bill them for some new USB dongles.

The mandatory updates etc. is sort of crazy. The most annoying things is having to specify connections as metered so updates are not download over things like 4g/LTE connections.

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mm0fmf 10 years ago

:-)

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Dennis Lee Bieber 10 years ago

On Sat, 18 Jun 2016 18:05:31 +0100, mm0fmf declaimed the following:

And then there is the threat of their "refresh W10"

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Which has the potential to wipe out any third-party applications (I understand it will even wipe out M$ Office installs)... If one accidentally lets it run one could be facing days or weeks of re-installing all one's needed applications (some of which had nasty install requirements to begin with... ever look at the devil's contract one has to fill out to get TI CCS6?). I'd have to reinstall IDEs for Sardine, TIVA [CCS], Visual Studio Express, BASIC Stamp, Propeller, MPLab... And that doesn't even cover the non-programming applications.

Wulfraed Dennis Lee Bieber AF6VN wlfraed@ix.netcom.com HTTP://wlfraed.home.netcom.com/

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mm0fmf 10 years ago

If you accidently do the wrong thing there's normally a consequence.

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Rob Doyle 10 years ago

Yeh. You can blame that on Microsoft. Apparently on W10 you cannot opt out of updating drivers anymore. Or something like that.

That's all part of the new forced upgrade philosophy. It's not just the prolific stuff.

Rob.

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Darren Salt 10 years ago

I demand that Dennis Lee Bieber may or may not have written...

[snip]

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It's not entirely effective: it leaves Windows itself behind...

| _ | Darren Salt, using Debian GNU/Linux (and Android) | ( ) | | X | ASCII Ribbon campaign against HTML e-mail | / \ | You are in a maze of little twisting passages, all different.

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Darren Salt 10 years ago

I demand that Rob Doyle may or may not have written...

[snip; W10 updates]

I misread that as 'forced upgrade hostility'. Make of that what you will! ?

| _ | Darren Salt, using Debian GNU/Linux (and Android) | ( ) | | X | ASCII Ribbon campaign against HTML e-mail | / \ | "He taught us drawing, stretching, and fainting in coils."

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Folderol 10 years ago

Oi! Pack that in. I was just having my late night drinking chocolate :o

W J G

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Tauno Voipio 10 years ago

The reason is prefectly clear: The hardware of yesteryear is good enough to keep the users happy. There must be a mechanism to force them to buy new hardware, and escalate it to upgrading the whole shop.

-TV

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ChrisK 10 years ago

There is a package here

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That forces the install of an old driver that works with older devices and sets a policy to stop it being force updated. Seems to work for me for some genuine older devices on W10.

Seems a bit high handed to block genuine older devices to spite the cloners. Some of these older devices could well be installed in

HTH

Chris K

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PL2303 serial adapters

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