[HN Gopher] FTDI FT232RL: Real vs. Fake (2014) ___________________________________________________________________ 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] ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-06-14 23:00 UTC)