serial to USb adapter

[Starlight 1]

Hi all is there any way to get more then 1 serial to USb adapter to work on a pc or laptop.

I use one for my Heq5 pro mount and it work ok put when I try to use 2 it can not see it and will not download any drivers for it to work.

I trying to use the Gps at the same time ,I try on XP AND WINDOWS 7

any help please.

thanks

les

[syd_malicious]

I can only give rather generic advice but it is based on struggling with them in the past. It may not be applicable to your setup though.

There are generally 2 chipsets used in these things - FTDI and Prolific. The Prolific ones are cheaper but that's not to say that expensive ones don't use that chipset.

I would steer clear of the Prolific chipsets as these tend to have more compatibility problems and each device does not have a unique identifier (unlike FTDI). This means that whichever port you plug the FTDI into it will still keep the same com port number. If you put a Prolific one into a different port it will take a new com port number.

You can use multiple USB adapters in the same PC (of both sorts) but I would simply download the latest driver direct from either Prolific or FTDI. If you are limited by available USB ports then just a fairly standard USB hub would help too.

The main problem is that you don't necessarily know which chipset a particular adapter is using. Some places will tell you and I would lean towards going with them. Just search "ftdi serial usb" on Ebay and there are a few available such as this one.

Paul

[damnut]

Hi Starlight1,

It should be pretty straightforward with Win XP - plug and pray. The prolific drivers are the most common. If at first the device driver is not functioning properly by seeing the yellow exclamaition mark in checking drivers&Settings, then always disable deinstall and run again, this will usually clear any confilcts.

With W7 it is not supposed to work!, however I have a magellan gps that I connected into memory map via a USB serial adapter along with my LX into skymap!.Jump onto the net, get the latest prolific drivers, install connect, you will probably find that they will not work, again de-install and re-install, That did it for me!.

Cheers

Damian

[Starlight 1]

I have try all day and still no luck.

The blue one come up as Prolific serial to USb and work ok

The green one has got hl-2303 on it side of the serial end of the lead and do not come up anywere as seen on any computer XP OR 7