It's not only FTDI - Prolific PL2303 based cables with fake chips often prompted Code 10 driver errors with more recent drivers, and this led to even more ugliness with Prolific refusing to support older PL2303 iterations in Windows 10 to try and stamp out clones.
It's why I'm happy to see the market moved towards Silabs CP2102 bridge chips for a bit. Those have worked very well for me overall, with no such driver headaches. I'm sure there are probably fakes of the CP2102 as well. But the Winchiphead CH34x series seem to be even cheaper but are rather unstable. It's an annoying alternative that some Chinese manufacturers have decided to adopt.
I've actively avoided using their chips too.. What they did wasn't fair to the end users of equipment who now have non-working hardware/software and will have no recourse other that just throw it out assuming it is faulty, beyond repair or beyond warranty period. I do not have sympathy for them because other businesses (even if it is rare!) can manage to make considerate decisions even if it means a hit to some profitability. Just yesterday in the news, some nice story about a CEO who put himself on $70k just like the rest of his employees.
Whirlpool, Hotpoint and some hoover manufacturer (not Hoover) are on my no-buy list too, for fire reasons and for unpleasant company founder reasons.
That was very interesting. I had not heard of this FTDI problem before. I must have been lucky with all the FTDI chips that I had purchased in the past, although we only purchased from certain sites, such as Farnell. However, this wasn't for ethical reasons, it was just because they gave credit and the University paid when invoiced after delivery.
I'm not sure what I think about a company deliberately causing systems to fail because an unlicensed copy is used. I have sympathy for their commercial problems but then again, I just want my stuff to work. Maybe I won't buy FTDI modules anymore.
Yeah, with FTDI - we had a number of students in the University I worked at buy FTDI serial cables and wonder why their hardware no longer worked, or that they couldn't programme the microcontrollers.
I know! I still cannot break the habit of buying at least two,, just in case one doesn't work. More likely, just in case I break one. After 35 years working I ended up with a large about of 'stuff' left over from designs because of this. It all went into a yellow WEE (or is it WEEE?) skip when I retired. It was a shame but who wanted 20 year old out of date components.
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