[chirp_users] baofeng cable

[Jim Unroe]

On Sat, Feb 20, 2016 at 1:47 PM, Lreiher <lreiher at comcast.net> wrote:
> folks, thank you all for your efforts to help me out.  the reality is
> that BENTON seems to have it correct. the cable i purchased was directly
> from baofeng. i believe that the source was china b/c when i wrote them
> they told me i bought it 14 mo.s ago and that it was listed as 'works w/
> win vista, win7, win 8' and was never listed as for win 10. i pointed
> out that win 10 did not exist when i bought the cable!  clearly, they
> have used a CLONE of the ftdi chip and, as benton noted, the drivers
> which FTDI loaded into my PC w/o my knowledge or permission was designed
> to send TRASH to my cable and render it inoperable! i proved that by
> using a friend's cable and it worked fine w/ my UV-5RTP; but, my cable
> on HIS pc is useless. the device mgr sees the cable but does NOT get
> thru it to see the radio.  i asked baofeng if tthey would write code to
> FIX the cable since it is their shared fault for using a clone in the
> first place. they didnt respond to that message.  now, i have reviewed
> about 15 programming cables; all - EXCEPT one - are less than $6; oNE is
> $20 and it is marked 'genuine FTDI cable'.  so, i kknow that i could
> resolve this for 20 bucks. but i am pissed that FTDI trashed something i
> purchasedd in good faith FROM the manufacturer!!
> so, i was hoping someone had the expertise to write code to send to my
> cable to make it functional again.
>
> thanks again to you all for your input; however, i'm afraid that i'm
> still out in left field.............
> peace,
> larry
> KD9AVZ

Larry,

What you say above is mostly inaccurate.

No programming cable manufactured and labeled for Baofeng (the Chinese
manufacturer of Baofeng radios) contains an FTDI chip. These
programming cables all have counterfeit Prolific type chips in them.
You should be able to go into Device Manager and confirm that the chip
in your programming cable is being reported as a Prolific type chip,
not an FTDI chip.

The Prolific drivers auto installed by Windows since around 2008 and
later are intentionally incompatible with the counterfeit Prolific
chips. So this is not a new issue. It has been going on for over 8
years.

There is no damage done to the "Prolific" chip. The programming cable
simply does not function properly. All one has to do to make them work
is to follow the guide on the miklor.com website to download, install
and select the older 2007 Prolific driver that was available before
Prolific decided to make their driver incompatible with counterfeit
chips. This works for Windows XP (v2.0.2.1 driver) and Windows, 7, 8,
8.1 and 10 (v3.2.0.0 driver). I've been doing this for nearly 4 years
with my Windows 7 64-bit computer and have tested these older drivers
on Windows 8, 8.1 and 10 virtual machines. They all work fine if you
have the patience to properly install the older drivers.

http://www.miklor.com/COM/UV_Drivers.php

About a year ago the FTDI driver installed by Windows did reprogram
the counterfeit FTDI chip so that it no longer worked. But it was not
damaged. Anyone could download software from the FTDI web site to
restore it to working order. Distribution of this FTDI diver was
stopped after about a week due to a large public outcry. You would
have to go out of your way to get this driver.

The latest FTDI driver, like the Prolific driver, does not change
anything in the chip. It just adds "interference" to the serial data
being transferred making it useless. Falling back to an older driver
(the same as is done for Prolific based programming cables) will allow
a "fake" FTDI chip work just fine.

A programming cable with a genuine FTDI chip is pretty much
plug-and-play. This is most likely what the chip in your friends
programming cable is. This is why it works in both his any your
computer without any extra effort.

Your programming cable, having a counterfeit Prolific type chip would
require both you and your friend to download, install and select the
older 2007 Prolific device driver in order for the programming cable
to function properly.

And "FTDI" did nothing to your programming cable, because you
programming cable has nothing "FTDI" in it.

Jim KC9HI