FTDI could have just written a driver which randomly drops approximately one byte in N if a non-genuine chip is detected. Start off with N fairly high and decrease it towards 1 in 1000 over time. Result: fakes and clones get a reputation for being flaky.No, FTDI would get a reputation of being flaky. Before FTDI, the most popular were Prolific chips. Counterfeits worked unreliably with the new drivers computer could even catch a BSOD with them. Needless to say, for most of the people it appeared that Prolific chips were crap, not that they have bought a counterfeit.
Yeah, this sounds like a cheap excuse. Prolific drivers were crap and FTDI drivers just worked - that's why FTDI USB/UART bridges became so successful.
That's also why I still stay with FTDI if I need a USB/UART interface. Of course I prefer micros with USB where possible.
Does it sound reasonable to you that someone's device is ruined by the driver? ***The buyer*** had no clue a fake FTDI chip was used.
Does it sound reasonable to you that someone's device is ruined by the driver?
The buyer had no clue a fake FTDI chip was used.
Everyone is so caught up in the temporary inconvenience and hardship experienced by users and designers RIGHT NOW, as FTDI rolls out these drivers. Yes, it's hard, RIGHT NOW, but if FTDI keeps it up it will be very easy.
You keep saying there's no way to identify fakes. THERE IS, NOW. In fact it would be difficult to make it any easier.
You keep saying that you might develop a product, send it out, and it later gets bricked. Not if they keep this up. You'd brick your own board as soon as you started development, and all you have to do is plug the customer's board in, hit a character, and you'd know if it's genuine or not. It would never get into the hands of your customers with a fake chip on it.
Everyone is so caught up in the temporary inconvenience and hardship experienced by users and designers RIGHT NOW, as FTDI rolls out these drivers. Yes, it's hard, RIGHT NOW, but if FTDI keeps it up it will be very easy.
You keep saying there's no way to identify fakes. THERE IS, NOW. In fact it would be difficult to make it any easier.
You keep saying that you might develop a product, send it out, and it later gets bricked. Not if they keep this up. You'd brick your own board as soon as you started development, and all you have to do is plug the customer's board in, hit a character, and you'd know if it's genuine or not. It would never get into the hands of your customers with a fake chip on it.This is rather short sighted... The cloners already have a better chip rolling from the production lines so in a few months FTDI has to find a different way of identifying fakes. There is no way of telling that won't affect boards with real FTDI chips but what is certain is that when the differences between the clones and the real ones get smaller the detection algorithm has to be close to the edge so it is very likely that a real chip will be identified as a fake one. Worse, if they use timing related tests then it may fail every now and then leaving the end user with a device which doesn't work every now and then.
QuoteDoes it sound reasonable to you that someone's device is ruined by the driver? ***The buyer*** had no clue a fake FTDI chip was used.
Don't you think you answered your question eloquently? emphasis mine.
Who do you think is responsible for a moron running his car off a cliff? The car CEO or the moronic driver?
They've already forced the arduino knockoff makers to switch from FTDI fakes to another manufacturer...
QuoteDoes it sound reasonable to you that someone's device is ruined by the driver? ***The buyer*** had no clue a fake FTDI chip was used.
Don't you think you answered your question eloquently? emphasis mine.
Who do you think is responsible for a moron running his car off a cliff? The car CEO or the moronic driver?
You and eggroll seem to have reading comprehension problems.
I don't care about people like the OP who intentionally buy cheap Chinese Arduino clones.
What I care about are small shops like myself and others on here. People who design products for their own small companies or are consultants that help other small companies do the same.
We have every intention of using genuine parts, however, being small companies we might get bit by a shady contract manufacturer in China who "borrowed" our reel of genuine FTDI chips and replaced them with clones, or a supply chain problem with DigiKey.
We're not big enough to have an entire team on the ground 24/7 in China, which is why we have to use contract manufacturers in the first place! We might not be able to afford buying 100,000 chips directly from FTDI, which is why we use DigiKey et al.
If an entire batch of products get out into the wild and 6 months later FTDI decides to brick them, it's a disaster. Not only is our reputation gone, but it could cause us to go bankrupt.
A counterfeit 74-series logic chip or LM317 has never caused anyone to go bankrupt.
So, to remove that risk I won't use FTDI parts. That solves the problem for me. If FTDI goes out of business as a result, it's a shame, but they made the choice to alienate their customers and, as a result, lost their free ride.
The real problem at FTDI was precisely that free ride. They relied far too much on sales of a USB to Serial converter. Something most MCUs have built in these days and tons of other manufacturers make.
I suppose they tried, with things like that absolutely terrible GPU chip, but there was no real innovation there. It was nothing Chinese LCD chipset vendors and 4D Systems hadn't been doing for years, only less powerful and far too expensive. There was no innovation.
I think that sums up FTDI's biggest problem: Lack of innovation and vision.
Nailed it.
QuoteDoes it sound reasonable to you that someone's device is ruined by the driver? ***The buyer*** had no clue a fake FTDI chip was used.
Don't you think you answered your question eloquently? emphasis mine.
Who do you think is responsible for a moron running his car off a cliff? The car CEO or the moronic driver?
This is like if you had a fake iPhone and an Apple rep saw you with it on the street and came over and smashed it.
...its usually as simple as checking date codes match on the board to the same ones on the parts you sent.
BTW: if you don't need the extra features of the FTDI chip, just the serial port, it should be possible to modify the VID and PID with FT_Prog, and then use an INF file with the standard Microsoft USB serial port driver, like this one.
So let's say we have this sequence:
1. A device is designed in the USA and an FTDI part is specified. No "equivalent" in the BOM.
2. The device is produced by a contract manufacturer in the USA for a couple years using the FTDI part.
3. The contract manufacturer purchasing department inadvertently gets hold of the counterfeit but otherwise apparently functional parts.
4. The units pass the test fixture because it is not regularly updated with the drivers that either disable or transmit bogus data.
5. Some number of units are distributed to the field.
6. Some of the units fail early because the computer already has the updated driver.
7. Other units work for a while and fail when the driver is updated.
8. The designer of the device has long since worked on another project.
9. The now non-functional units go back through the warranty department, instead of the engineering department.
10. It takes some amount of time before the failure rate is noticed and turned over to engineering.
11. Another engineer is assigned to look at the problem. He is otherwise quite skilled, but not experienced with the FTDI products or issues.
12. The contract manufacturer has since sourced legitimate parts.
13. The devices with the counterfeit parts are written off as containing unreliable FTDI parts.
A year later, somebody who KNOWINGLY bought a KNOWN COUNTERFEIT device on eBay runs into a similar issue. So what? He had it coming. There is no reason to believe the counterfeiters have infiltrated the legitimate supply chains again as they did a year ago.
...its usually as simple as checking date codes match on the board to the same ones on the parts you sent.You cannot be serious. Nobody does that.