[chirp_users] FTDI good - not FTDI bad

[Drew from Zhrodague]

On 8/29/16 2:05 PM, Richard B. Emerson wrote:
> While I've spent some time with Linux (mostly SuSE and some Red Hat),
> I've never tried serial/USB converters at all. However, based on zero
> experience with the application, I'll take a guess and say it may be the
> Linux drivers are more "cooperative". In fact, do you know if you loaded
> drivers that came with the cable or relied on native Linux drivers? My
> point being that perhaps the Prolific drivers are as much to blame as
> anything. The logical conclusion is to build a Linux machine to support
> CHIRP and Prolific cables - talk about reinventing the Zippo to light a
> campfire...

	It's actually the drivers written by Prolific which detect a genuine or 
knock-off Prolific chip, and will either work or not work depending on 
that. Prolific wants to make sure only their chips work with their 
driver. The solution is to install an older Prolific driver version, and 
then prevent Windows from updating it to the latest version.

	Linux developers want their stuff to work, so they make sure that it 
does. The pl2303 driver for linux doesn't do any checking on the 
authenticity of the usb/serial chips, as far as I understand.

	Also, I didn't have to install any kind of driver for Linux, with the 
exception of OpenWRT, which needs the kmod-pl2303 package installed 
before it will work.

	I've tested a few sub-generic pl2303 knock-offs with TinyCore, CentOS, 
Fedora, OpenWRT, and Ubuntu. I do not use Windows.

	(Really happy about hearing we have IC-7100 support, and can't wait to 
try CHIRP tonite with ubuntu on this thin-client I've been using as a 
radio-workstation)