[Ham-Mac] Prolific USB/Serial driver woes

[Chris Smolinski]

I recently installed the Prolific USB/Serial driver on my Intel iMac, 
so I could use a USB GPS dongle that I recently bought. As usual with 
Prolific drivers on the Mac, it's caused nothing but trouble. In this 
case, I got a kernel panic each and every time I shut down. Removing 
the driver solved the problem. This is using the latest and greatest 
version of their driver, V1.2.1R2 from their download page. I've had 
problems in the past with their driver on previous OS X versions as 
well as Mac OS 9, but only on some systems. On other Macs, it has 
worked OK. I've even had cases of two identical (hardware-wise) 
iMacs, where the driver worked OK on one, and caused problems on the 
other, leading me to believe it is some subtle conflict with other 
drivers or software.

Just a word of caution, if you're in the market for a USB/serial 
driver, I'd suggest staying away from Prolific, unless you like to 
gamble. I have had excellent luck with any units that use the FTDI 
chipset, they tend to cost a lot less than Keyspan converters.

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Chris Smolinski
Black Cat Systems
http://www.blackcatsystems.com