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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : FTDI Drivers Are Killing Fake Chips
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| JohnS Guru  Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 4036 |
I'm reading it, too. Looks quite good, though if I've grasped it then the nice simple power option in Fig 1-3 (or 1-4?) means GPIO pins would be 5V logic. I'm wondering what Windows / Linux software ("drivers"?) exist to control the GPIOs, too. John |
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vasi Guru Joined: 23/03/2007 Location: RomaniaPosts: 1697 |
Guys, MCP2200 is no different than PIC18F14K50 - are the same chip. For the PIC18F14K50 you can find the firmware sources on legacy MLA if you use MPLAB C18 or the new versions if you use XC8. It allows inverted serial lines if you need that, and autobaud, Also, signaling on two LEDs. ___________ Forgot the DTR line if you want (I use that for booting devices)... also other control lines, etc. There is also PIC18LF14K50 variant Hobbit name: Togo Toadfoot of Frogmorton Elvish name: Mablung Miriel Beyound Arduino Lang |
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| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 4036 |
Very interesting - got my threads a bit crossed. John |
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| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 4036 |
Anyone with a "bricked" FT232R can reprogram it under Windows (may need XP) using an FTDI utility I gather and for Linux there's a post here with a link to the source code of a program to do it. John |
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Bill.b Senior Member  Joined: 25/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 235 |
Apparently you can debrick the chip http://hackaday.com/2014/10/22/watch-that-windows-update-ftd i-drivers-are-killing-fake-chips/ Bill In the interests of the environment, this post has been constructed entirely from recycled electrons. |
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BobD Guru Joined: 07/12/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 935 |
Apparently FTDI have owned up to deliberate action to brick these fake chips. Commercial suicide? http://www.zdnet.com/ftdi-admits-to-bricking-innocent-users- chips-in-silent-update-7000035019/ |
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G8JCF Guru Joined: 15/05/2014 Location: United KingdomPosts: 676 |
Thanks Bob for that link. Stupid is as Stupid does ! FTDI have the legal right to do what they did, IMHO, but they have committed commercial suicide. The soonest FTDI can release program(s) which reverse that Windows' update, the better to rescue their company's fortunes. If they don't, people will avoid their products like the plague. This is one of those situations that being right doesn't mean that people will believe that you are in the right (the commentary on this forum shows as much). It must gall all those hard-working people at FTDI to see their work being stolen by pirates, but FTDI's solution, whilst legal and moral (IMHO) has backfired spectacularly. The FTDI marketing team must be held to account, if they didn't speak up about the consequences of this course of action, then they were at best negligent, at worst complicit. The legal team at FTDI presumably advised on the legal consequences without consideration of the bottom line (typical of lawyers and compliance), and the engineers just stayed in their hutches/burrows and kept their heads down hoping that that their jobs were safe, whilst the senior management continued to quaff champagne and caviare 
Peter The only Konstant is Change |
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Gizmo Admin Group  Joined: 05/06/2004 Location: AustraliaPosts: 5116 |
Yeah this is a silly move by FTDI. It means people will be scared off by windows updates, and the innocent end user, who has no idea their hardware is using fake components, will be unfairly affected. A smarter approach would have been to write the updater to check for a fake, and if it found one, alert the end user their hardware contains fake components so the update was not applied and they should to contact their supplier. That way the end user is not affected, but their suppliers are. Glenn The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the second best time is right now. JAQ |
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| G8JCF Guru Joined: 15/05/2014 Location: United KingdomPosts: 676 |
Hi Glenn Spot on ! A nag at very boot/device driver initialisation would have alerted users to the fact of counterfeit, increased awareness of FTDI, and would NOT have degraded the value of Windows' Update - (looks like MSFT's marketing people were asleep again). Peter The only Konstant is Change |
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Grogster Admin Group Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9588 |
The Prolific PL2303 was another USB-serial chip which was cloned six ways from Sunday. You can buy complete leads with USB plug on one end, and 9-pin serial "D" plug on the other end from eBay for about $3 each. Genuine? I think not..... The genuine Prolific USB-serial cable is about $30 or so in NZ money. I have one, and it works flawlessly. I also have two or three of the cheap ones I bought on eBay before I knew any better, and they were really, really hard to get working. I have binned the cheap ones - not worth the brain-strain. Perhaps genuine Prolific 2303 sales will go up as a result of the FTDI bricking saga? Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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| G8JCF Guru Joined: 15/05/2014 Location: United KingdomPosts: 676 |
Perhaps FTDI, Prolific and SiLabs should release "Genuine XXXXXXX product" checkers ? The only Konstant is Change |
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| BobD Guru Joined: 07/12/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 935 |
Could be a new market for them. With the amount of forgery going on they may actually sell more of the checkers than their own product. |
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| Grogster Admin Group Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9588 |
The issue with the bricking as I see it, will be overcome with the next clone. The people who cloned the original, have no ethics anyway to be doing what they are doing, so once they realise that FDTI et-al start putting ways to detect the cloned chips in their drivers, they will just alter their clones to make them send fake "Genuine" codes to the driver, and it all begins again. Humans can be rather horrid when it comes to money - ill-gotten gain is what it is all about for some of this species.  Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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| G8JCF Guru Joined: 15/05/2014 Location: United KingdomPosts: 676 |
One of the really interesting side affects of this debate is that it shows that making silicon chips is no longer the preserve of the big companies. The impression I get is that in China at least, there are fabs in people's garages/front-rooms. When I was a young impressionable engineer, (I'm still impressionable but not so young anymore) chip fabs were extremely high tech affairs with mega-buck entry prices. Peter The only Konstant is Change |
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| G8JCF Guru Joined: 15/05/2014 Location: United KingdomPosts: 676 |
@Grog Humans, like all living organisms, will always seek ways to obtain more regardless of the cost to others. That is Evolution after all. We may find the desire to survive, win and triumph somewhat distasteful, but if we humans didn't have those traits, then we humans wouldn't be the dominant species on the planet, let alone be around. The facts of life are : Me My Mate My Offspring My Family My Tribe My Country My World My Species My Planet Peter The only Konstant is Change |
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| Grogster Admin Group Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9588 |
Good point. Still......  Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 4036 |
Under English law definitely they don't. They have no such right and indeed are on the hook both for damages and for criminal acts. (Try The Computer Misuse Act 1990 but there are others and amendments.) By way of example, if someone has an illegal copy of a music CD the record company do not have the right to break in and smash up your CD player and the CD. They would have the right to seek that you not use the copy and/or that you pay their lost money (which would be less than the sale price). Disabling your CD player, for example, would not be allowed, with or without any kind of malware detection and possibly a warning. Those would be criminal acts. You may have meant a "moral" right, but if you think about it then the law has it right and they don't have such a moral right. People/firms don't have moral rights to cause havoc to others who may well be innocent in the sense that they have no knowledge they are using a cloned item. All along the problem is one of FTDI's own making: they charge far too much (in USA/England etc; I do wonder if their chips are dramatically cheaper within China). I can buy a non-cloned STM32 cpu for less than a much simpler FT232R. That just opens up a reason to clone. John |
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| Grogster Admin Group Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9588 |
...did you get to the end of the 2200 datasheet? 
This chip(the 2200) is now the frontrunner for me. Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 4036 |
I read parts of the MCP2200 sheet but I find them tough going due mainly to the length and that I'm not a hardware designer. It looks OK but for PC to USB-serial+GPIO I'd want a cheap ready-made board to use instead of FT232 or PL2303 or CP210x etc. I don't know any cheap MCP2200 boards. I'm considering the USBISP / USBASP as a way to program PIC32. I may go for CP210x / PL2303 / etc via libusb. John |
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bigmik Guru Joined: 20/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2949 |
Lads, (Yes I am still alive  )
A very interesting conversation... I have had one of my chips do exactly that (reset the PID to 0) and thought it died.. My Dontronics cable is still functioning OK so I assume that this is a genuine Chip. My driver date is August this year so it must have updated when I reinstalled windows after my HDD crash recently. Whilst I empathise with FTDI's predicament I believe they have left themselves open to some serious legal action.. to openly `destroy' someones product is a very dangerous path for them to navigate down. The irony of all of this is that the CHINESE clones work reasonably well, (arguably nearly as good as the genuine FTDI chip). They use a totally different hardware design so why didnt they just release it with their own PID/VID Numbers and their own drivers and call it a FTID or IDTF chip instead of trying to cheat and pretend it to be a FTDI chip... It could be pin for pin compatible but a different product with different drivers. Beggar's belief sometimes.. If the PID/VID can be programmed then it only requires a reprogram to a unique PID/VID number and use patched FTDI drivers with matching PID/VID. Regards, Mick Mick's uMite Stuff can be found >>> HERE (Kindly hosted by Dontronics) <<< |
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