[TenTec] Rig control cables -Orion1

[John Henry]

There is actually nothing wrong with the standard prolific PL2303
chipset, nor the drivers (caveat, not that I know of since the last
time I tested anyway). However, the problem comes in to play when you
have different manufacturers who take a perfectly good given chipset,
and then make a cable out of it. They don't always follow the
suggested wiring/implementation from the chip manufacturers. Case in
point. The original 316 used the Prolific PL2303 chipset, and quite
frankly there was no way I could find to break it. No way to make it
fail on any version of Windows, and all other OS users said it worked
fine, automatically, flawlessly. This went on for quite some time, no
problems at all. Then, we got a new shipment of cables. Unfortunately,
that last shipment of 316 cables did not follow the RS232 standard in
all cases and would end up not working well with certain computer
manufacturers.  We even pointed out to them what the standard stated
and how it failed. All of them went back to the distributor, and we
were left without a cable we could ship, so we started investigating
several on the market. Found that most are fine, and follow all of the
"required" standards, and work well. Some don't. I can't identify
here, but I can state that the one we ship now, the 317, works just
fine. It is FTDI chip based.
Again, there is no problem with a properly cabled up Prolific chipset
based cable, nor is there anything wrong with a properly cabled up
FTDI based cable.
Granted, since we shifted to the current 317 cable, I have not
investigated anything new in PL2303 based cables in about a year, so
it very well could be that there are issues now that customers have
seen, but I have not.

My two cents, if you get a cable, get one from someone that you can
return it to in case it doesn't work out.
No, they are not all made the same, and some may handle all of the
"required" standards yet can glitch at times. I've seen one that works
perfect until it is stressed with loads of traffic. Then it drops once
in a while.

Anyway, my two cents (darn, I already gave two, does that mean I'm
giving 4 now? inflation....), get the 317 from TenTec, hi hi, it helps
pay the bills and keeps me employed, hi hi....(shameless plug)

John


> I have had good luck with FTDI and some others I purchased on eBay.
> I used to like Prolific based adapters, but lately the drives seem
> buggy.  I believe TenTec has changed vendors and no longer sells a
> Prolific-based adapter (not sure that that was my impression from my
> last perusal of the TT web site...)  John Henry of TenTec posted an
> explanation of problems they had with various versions of the Prolific
> set - some versions are, apparently - better than others.
>
> A year ago I would have insisted on a Prolific based adapter, but now I
> think not.
>
> ==================  K8JHR  ====================================
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> On 11/22/2011 8:03 PM, Carl Moreschi wrote:
> > Make sure you have the FTDI chipset.
> >