The drivers on the CD that ships with the device should work. Don’t bother trying to cut through the vinyl its very tough and the black blob cannot be removed from the chip without damaging the chip itself. That blob is also encapsulating material and effectively blocks access to the PL2303 chip that is on that board. Inside the vinyl of that DB9 connecter, you’ll find a small circuit board with a black blob or button. It is often covered in a light blue, flexible vinyl covering – an encapsulation really – that runs from the USB adapter handle to the 9-pin RS232 connecter at the other end. The general purpose adapters are sold for between US$10-25. Here, I am not referring to the adapters that are for mobile telephones or PDAs and are sold by the companies that make those products. I doubt that an item that is sold for $7 is tested at all, where one that sells for $39 has likely been tuned for its particular purpose. The higher price likely reflects the effort they made to test the product. Try and order a product that is made for the device that you want to connect to. Purchase a device from a reputable dealer. Desktop computers can connect to these devices via a simple 3-wire cable to the serial RS-232 DB9 Male plug at the rear of the box, but laptops only have USB ports, hence the demand for these adapter cables. See the forums for hobbyists that work with microcomputer development tools such as the Microchip™ programmers and in-circuit debuggers and emulators. Its also unlikely that anyone can fix them.Ĭomplaints about these devices go back as far as 2000. The long and the short of this blog is that many PL2303 USB to RS-232 adapter cables don’t work. I have not purchased it, but its a big community and you can ask how they see it.

There may be a readily available and workable adapter from the Arduino people.

How to make a serial loopback cable