FTDI driver kills fake FTDI FT232??

[Kjelt]

If you can't proof they did it on purpose with the evidence to back it up, you have no case.
Besides that, no judge will convict a company that "accidently" broke illegal cloned devices from a company that breached their IP in the first place,
AND the company that made the clones will not file a lawsuit in the first place because they were wrong to start with and don't care about their "customers" they sold their crap to.

[nctnico]

If you can't proof they did it on purpose with the evidence to back it up, you have no case.
Besides that, no judge will convict a company that "accidently" broke illegal cloned devices from a company that breached their IP in the first place,
AND the company that made the clones will not file a lawsuit in the first place because they were wrong to start with and don't care about their "customers" they sold their crap to.

Those are your assumptions. When it comes to legal matters you better make sure you have read and understood the application (=study similar cases) of the laws before making bold statements.

[Kjelt]

Those are your assumptions. When it comes to legal matters you better make sure you have read and understood the application (=study similar cases) of the laws before making bold statements.

As you did and you are now going to present your legal expertise findings to this forum..... ?

[NewKleer]

So, a lot of these issues were due to the chance of getting a counterfeit chip... well what if you only purchased genuine chips from Mouser, that to your dismay, respond with the "NON GENUINE DEVICE FOUND!" response?! I was "lucky" enough to get these! (date code 1550-C D5657501 if it matters),  FTDI's response to mouser (seems to be a standard one):

"As a consequence of the R chip device success, it has become necessary to extend the chip identifier string by an extra bit to allow for the higher volumes. In completing this update, the driver also required a change to accommodate the revised string length. This driver fix has now been implemented in version 2.12.16.
 
http://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/CDM/CDM%20v2.12.16%20WHQL%20Certified.zip
 
We acknowledge that driver updates may not be appropriate or possible in some cases and would like to take this opportunity to allow customers to return affected devices under RMA to be replaced."

So yes, fantastic, genuine chips (with certain driver versions) come up as counterfeit. Yes, its confirmed that the latest driver works (but now i need to inform all customers with older drivers to update to the latest), but this is just another nail in the coffin for FTDI. Hopefully the chips work fine in Windows XP (with old v2.08 or whatever drivers)/Android.

[BradC]

Oh that is bad. Really bad. I could stomach the other stuff, but making your genuine chips incompatible with existing drivers is not on. They should have been a new revision or stepping and *required* a new driver update rather than just silently not working. That is unforgivable.

[TJ232]

There were some rumours for a while but if this new one will be also confirmed then...another big nail sealing tight the FTDI coffin.

Have you read the book "How to f.ck a good bussines in 5 easy steps"? Me neither but FTDI Management for sure has done a deep study based on that book. They might be some of the authors

[e100]

Does any know how the latest version (2.12.18.0 or 2.12.16) of the driver deals with fake chips?
I checked several of my one and two year old Chinese sourced board expecting to brick or see a "non genuine" message or something, but they are all working fine.

Out of curiosity, how many different fakes are there? Are there fakes of fakes?, Are there distinct families of fakes or are they all derived from a common original fake? Are the fakes being actively updated to counter the updates to the driver? 

Mike

[ebclr]

Avoid FTDI,  that is the right path

[hasithvm]

So, a lot of these issues were due to the chance of getting a counterfeit chip... well what if you only purchased genuine chips from Mouser, that to your dismay, respond with the "NON GENUINE DEVICE FOUND!" response?! I was "lucky" enough to get these! (date code 1550-C D5657501 if it matters),  FTDI's response to mouser (seems to be a standard one):

"As a consequence of the R chip device success, it has become necessary to extend the chip identifier string by an extra bit to allow for the higher volumes. In completing this update, the driver also required a change to accommodate the revised string length. This driver fix has now been implemented in version 2.12.16.
 
http://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/CDM/CDM%20v2.12.16%20WHQL%20Certified.zip
 
We acknowledge that driver updates may not be appropriate or possible in some cases and would like to take this opportunity to allow customers to return affected devices under RMA to be replaced."

So yes, fantastic, genuine chips (with certain driver versions) come up as counterfeit. Yes, its confirmed that the latest driver works (but now i need to inform all customers with older drivers to update to the latest), but this is just another nail in the coffin for FTDI. Hopefully the chips work fine in Windows XP (with old v2.08 or whatever drivers)/Android.

FTDI: Drivers so secure, they won't work with our own hardware!

[Red Squirrel]

Avoid FTDI,  that is the right path

Yep, when I was in the market for a USB to serial chip I looked elsewhere after hearing about the FTDIgate and all that.  Found the Microchip MCP 2221, it's actually a pretty nice chip, it has other misc features like a few gpio pins and can also do HID and i2c.   I have not looked into any of those features yet, I'm still a newbie myself at electronics, but it's nice to know they're there.

[ebclr]

Silabs CP 2102 another option

[batteksystem]

Glad that I never use FTDI in the first place. Microchip USB MCU is another choice (like PIC18F4550)

[bookaboo]

This could be coincidence or unrelated but we have just had 3 Barth PLCs fail with a comms error, the PLC works fine with the previous program but when trying to update it just says "iThok-RS232: Error write data ti", the virtual COM port that was previously there dissapears. Barth are a low end PLC but are a German company distributed by RS Components. Inside the PLC I can see the FTDI chip. The first unit ran 2 weeks, the 2nd ran 2 days and the 3rd for 1 day.

If its the case that some fakes have gotten into the supply chain and causing this problem (from what I read here they dont fry them just ignore them now) what drivers can be used to read the fakes? (if indeed they are fake... no evidence for that yet).

[batteksystem]

Never use FTDI before, glad that I don't need to use them.

[bookaboo]

This could be coincidence or unrelated but we have just had 3 Barth PLCs fail with a comms error, the PLC works fine with the previous program but when trying to update it just says "iThok-RS232: Error write data ti", the virtual COM port that was previously there dissapears. Barth are a low end PLC but are a German company distributed by RS Components. Inside the PLC I can see the FTDI chip. The first unit ran 2 weeks, the 2nd ran 2 days and the 3rd for 1 day.

If its the case that some fakes have gotten into the supply chain and causing this problem (from what I read here they dont fry them just ignore them now) what drivers can be used to read the fakes? (if indeed they are fake... no evidence for that yet).

That's easy.  Replace Windows with Linux.  FTDI drivers are built into the Kernel, and there is none of this "clones vs. monopoly" bullshit, so it should "Just Work".

Friends don't let friends design anything industrial using any Windows O/S ...

If you can't change the O/S at this stage of the game, then get your supplier to fix it-- (it should be under warranty)-- replace the board(s) that have the clone chips in them with boards that have FTDI chips in them.

We got the issue sorted, nothing to do with FTDI chip in the end. Something weird deep in the .ini file causing an issue as we were pushing the little PLC a bit hard. We got it sorted with some good tech support from Barth and pro-sign.de so thumbs up for them.

Thumbs down as well for FTDI anyway.

[3roomlab]

just a general question, does FTDI still continue to brick CHINA FTDI products?
cos i just bought some FTDI equipped stuff from CHINA and the supplied driver is not working, i am contemplating to use the actual FTDI  driver  ...  or does anyone have a CHINA version driver like v2.12.14 i could "borrow" ... 

[crispytato]

I'm pretty sure that new drivers don't brick the chips, they just won't readout data correctly. http://hackaday.com/2016/02/01/ftdi-drivers-break-fake-chips-again/