hippy, hippy, hooray!!! It's very good to see you here, and I'm going to take it as an indication that this planet is getting back to "normal", in a good way. You have been missed. Welcome home.Hi folks - I'm back !
Thanks for all your expressions of concern and appreciations. And apologies for my long absence.
Due to the way things were it was proving just too tempting to respond to posts, get engaged and caught-up in discussions, so I cut myself off from the forum as much as that meant missing the community and all of you in it.
As a consequence I have missed a fair bit and am still in the process of catching up, trying to recall all the things which were second nature back then.
Hopefully I will soon be back up to speed and it will be 'back to normal'.
And just to say; it is good to be back and to see you all here. And many, many, thanks to everyone who posted and helped out, answered questions and gave advice, while I was away.
It is possible to use generic non-FTDI USB modules if one really wants to. All that should be needed is something to change the polarity of the signals from UART (idle high) to RS232-style (idle low) and that can be achieved with any inverting logic package, Inverter, NAND, NOR, XOR, a couple of transistors if that way inclined, or, of course, a MAX232 or the like.Also, switching from the expensive "ftdi" serial cable to a generic usb-ttl cable would help a lot.
You could well be right; not all chips or drivers support 'break signalling'. It can sometimes be possible to connect a button between the Download Serial In pin on the chip and +V, use that as a 'push to initiate download'. One could probably survive with that in the short term but not ideal.Still, I think the adapter/chip should support the break signal, which is not the case for most of the usb-ttl chip.
That might be the key to the argument. Needing/building dozens could possibly press the budget.Re: cheap USB converters, I still swear by Goeytex's wonderful post at https://picaxeforum.co.uk/threads/problem-with-downloading-the-program-onto-the-picaxe.18715/#post-174475
I have built dozens of these using one-dollar adapters, and they all work fine.
Don't forget the extra resistor when you find yourself powering a PICAXE project with 3v!!I only program @ 5v, so only use the pull down resistor on picaxe chip, without serial resistor.
My trusty XP system finally crashed and burned so I have got with the programme and am using Windows 10 as my primary home system. I will work my way through the sack of adapters I have acquired over the years and see what works and doesn't. for me..In fact, most any USB-serial adapter works, as long as Win10 supports it. CP2102, CH340, and FTDI are good choices. Pass on Prolific's PL-2303 adapter, most are the HX version which Win10 doesn't support.
I can sympathise with where FTDI were coming from as they were having their business stolen from under their feet, were suffering reputational damage when being blamed for issues with chips they had not manufactured nor sold. The problem with their solution is they underestimated how many believed those selling 'fake chips' should be allowed to do that.And I have neither forgiven nor forgotten 2014's FTDI-gate: https://www.zdnet.com/article/ftdi-admits-to-bricking-innocent-users-chips-in-silent-update/ Bricked chips, anyone?
Welcome to Windows 10 and Prolific: an unfortunate combination! The old Prolific-based leads work fine with the old Prolific drivers (I have a stash of old drivers that I can call on).My trusty XP system finally crashed and burned so I have got with the programme and am using Windows 10 as my primary home system. I will work my way through the sack of adapters I have acquired over the years and see what works and doesn't. for me..
I don't recall any problems with Prolific but that could be down to their being older versions.
That is a common definition but it has generally been accepted as 'any period longer than where the stop bit should be' which is what actually happened when a physical cable was unplugged, the connection broken.Break Signaling is a method whereby software can tell the chip/adapter to send an active signal on the chips TX line for (12 * BitTime)
BitTime(us) is (1,000,000 / BaudRate) so at 4800 baud .... BreakTime = (1000000/4800) * 12 ... or 2.5 ms.
It put a smile on my face when my "This PC doesn't support Windows 11" arrived a couple of days ago. I have had this PC for a while but not really used it it in anger given XP suited me fine, was completely locked down despite having had no updates apart from for WannaCry.And, guess what, hippy? Microsoft is in the final stages of testing Windows 11!
Possibly. I believe Windows 7 is also end of life but that keeps getting updates, though mostly Security and BitDefender.Doesn't that mean that they'll stop twiddling with Windows 10 at some point soon?
How old? My version is 2001, and I'm still using it almost daily. It's worth preserving in my opinion. I don't remember whether I had to do anything particular to get it to run on win10.really ancient version of PaintShopPro which did all I ever needed
But they chose to punish the customers of those peddling false chips - me being one of them. I had no idea the modules I bought were fake. I will never forgive them - I will not buy anything containing an FTDI component again, if I can at all help it.I can sympathise with where FTDI were coming from...
... The problem with their solution is they underestimated how many believed those selling 'fake chips' should be allowed to do that.
They symptom I encountered, was that every read from the device, returned the string "this is a fake" or words to that effect. It was actually still usable, with ancient drivers (like the ones Rev Ed ship )ZD Net's claim that "FTDI's surprise new driver reprograms the USB PID to 0, killing the chips instantly" isn't actually true, nor are they "bricked".
The ones I bought were perfect working editions. Who knows, maybe they weren't actually fake and it's just a bug in FTDI's driver?Fake FTDI Chips/Adapters:
These do not have a writable EEPROM and therefore cannot be programmed via FT_PROG to invert the Serial I/O lines as required by Picaxe. An external inverter will therefore be required for Picaxe Programming.
Yes, the way they did it wasn't great, could have been better.But they chose to punish the customers of those peddling false chips - me being one of them. I had no idea the modules I bought were fake. I will never forgive them - I will not buy anything containing an FTDI component again, if I can at all help it.
I had the 3.1 version from 1995, probably for Win 95 - https://winworldpc.com/product/paint-shop-pro/3xHow old? My version is 2001, and I'm still using it almost daily. It's worth preserving in my opinion. I don't remember whether I had to do anything particular to get it to run on win10.
Gimp probably does more than any one person is likely to need, but it's what I use if PSP doesn't do what I want.some other image editing software which doesn't do a lot more than I need.
But they chose to punish the customers of those peddling false chips - me being one of them. I had no idea the modules I bought were fake. I will never forgive them - I will not buy anything containing an FTDI component again, if I can at all help it.
They symptom I encountered, was that every read from the device, returned the string "this is a fake" or words to that effect. It was actually still usable, with ancient drivers (like the ones Rev Ed ship )
The ones I bought were perfect working editions. Who knows, maybe they weren't actually fake and it's just a bug in FTDI's driver?
Up until the driver change, they worked as expected/as I needed them to. I'd inverted the I/O successfully and used them to program Pixaxes. I can't remember if the serial numbers were identical, but I think I would have noticed if they were...Fakes/Counterfeits seem to work perfectly until you try to use advanced features , like changing the power descriptor, or inverting the I/Os via FT_PROG. If you got that message my guess is that they were most likely fake/counterfeit.
...and it's "Amazon's Choice" for "ftdi"Here is an example of a fake ..... Fake FDTI Adapter
I can't agree with that, though I appreciate you did not like the way FTDI dealt with the issue of fake chips, and that has turned you against the company.I think it's best to just play safe and avoid FTDI products.
I can't agree with that either.I think it's best to just play safe and avoid FTDI products. Once bitten, twice shy ... and never forgotten.
I expect that applies to many people who are of our age or also came to love XP, consider it the best OS Microsoft ever produced. I suspect most of us would have been happy with Windows 7, 10 and 11, if only they had kept the Classic Shell theme.I think "crotchety curmudgeon" might be an appropriate description of my relationship with MS ;-)
Was that a backup of a Windows XP machine?Getting VB6 to run on Win 10 turned out to be a doddle which may be of help to those who still have VB6 Apps they would like to keep working on rather than porting. I simply found a Backup CD, copied the entire "X:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio" tree to a new folder on Win 10
I'm clinging on to Windows Live Mail 2012, which is not too dissimilar in appear to OE - but was discontinued long agoFor email I went with Claws-Mail which is the closest match with Outlook Express I found.