[Elecraft] serial to USB

[Don Wilhelm]

All,

I feel I should add to the discussion the fact that these consumer 
quality USB to Serial adapters typically do not like to work at lower 
baud rates - the K2 uses 4800 baud.  So an adapter that works at the K3 
rate of 19.2k may have trouble when attempting to drive a K2.

The commercial quality USB to Serial converters (note that they are 
called converters instead of adapters) may not suffer from the same 
problems, my Edgeport/4 converter works well with the K2 even with the 
high polling rates of Ham Radio Deluxe.  Of course these commercial 
quality converters are more expensive than the $10 to $40 consumer 
quality adapters.

73,
Don W3FPR

On 2/11/2012 4:14 PM, Bob Cunnings wrote:
>> what IS the difference between FTDI and Prolific.
> They are two different manufacturers of USB to Serial hardware ICs (chips).
>
> http://www.ftdichip.com/
>
> http://www.prolific.com.tw/eng/company.asp
>
> Besides the hardware, each manufacturer supplies royalty free software
> (device drivers) as part of the solution for PC operating systems such
> as Mac, Windows and Linux.
>
> At work I have long used FTDI chips in products we design. A
> customized version of the signed driver package supplied by FTDI for
> 32 and 64 bit Windows is incorporated into our own software
> distribution. Prolific is generally ok but lately they have been
> warning about counterfeit parts and USB to Serial Cables:
>
> http://www.prolific.com.tw/eng/downloads.asp?id=31
>
>