[HN Gopher] FTDI FT232RL: Real vs. Fake (2014)
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       FTDI FT232RL: Real vs. Fake (2014)
        
       Author : buran77
       Score  : 17 points
       Date   : 2021-06-14 20:15 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (zeptobars.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (zeptobars.com)
        
       | mbreese wrote:
       | This was likely submitted (again?) because it was used as an
       | example in this recent ArsTechnica article:
       | 
       | https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/06/chip-shortages-lead-...
       | 
       | (which was posted to HN here:
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27506662)
        
       | squarefoot wrote:
       | Some context about the what happened years ago with fake (but
       | compatible and working) FT232 chips that were intentionally
       | bricked by FTDI updated Windows driver, that is, hitting (often
       | unaware) users instead of counterfeiters.
       | 
       | https://www.microchip.com/forums/m828027.aspx
       | 
       | Luckily Open Source drivers were unaffected. One more point in
       | favor of Open Source, and a good argument to stay away from
       | products by FTDI.
        
         | makomk wrote:
         | In this particular case, the commonly-available FT232 clones
         | supposedly worked better than the original - the bit banging
         | mode actually worked reliably on the knock-offs, whereas not so
         | much on the actual FTDI chips. (The difference that FTDI used
         | to brick the clones was that writing to the EEPROM one byte at
         | a time, which wasn't allowed according to the datasheet, worked
         | on the clones but not their own chips.)
        
       | bombcar wrote:
       | Counterfeit but working seems a whole different ballgame than
       | counterfeit and absolutely not even possible to work.
       | 
       | It's interesting that they went to the bother to mimic the chip
       | without simply duplicating the entire chip and layout.
        
       | kencausey wrote:
       | (2014)
        
         | resonanttoe wrote:
         | This would have been nice in the title of the post here.
         | 
         | I was getting slightly worried about some of my tools until I
         | saw the "Update 25th of October 2014:" at the bottom (Cause I
         | missed the date header at the top).
        
       | [deleted]
        
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       (page generated 2021-06-14 23:00 UTC)