Review Details

USB to Serial RS-232 Adapter with LED Indicators, FTDI Chipset, Supports Windows 11/10/8.1/8/7, Mac OS X 10.6 and Above

Product Review (submitted on January 7, 2014):

After having struggled with corrupt data on my PL2303-based adapter every few minutes, I was suspecting problems with the target device, especially when the problem persisted after swapping adapters, reloading drivers, and trying a different PC.

Lesson learned: Replacing a Prolific chip with another Prolific chip isn't gonna fix it! Go FTDI or go home.

I bought (two of) these and the problems haven't come back; I can receive *megs* of text without so much as a hiccup. Logging over a long weekend used to be completely out of the question, now it's become routine.

And yes, the diagnostic LEDs are every bit as useful as you'd imagine, perhaps more so. Not only do they show you TX/RX and flow control, but they show you *when the port is open at all*, which is super handy if you've got multiple adapters plugged in and you've lost track of which COM port is which. Forget the paperclip loopback! Forget unplugging things to see which port stops responding! Just watch each adapter go all Christmas-tree when you open its respective port, and the mystery is conclusively solved.

My colleague has been using the other one to drive an old board plotter, which had exhibited inexplicable, random, and extremely frustrating bugs for months. Switching to a genuine FTDI adapter made everything suddenly work! The misbehavior is gone, the software doesn't lock up anymore, and we're back to making boards in-house instead of sending them out. Turns out the plotter wasn't bad after all, it was just a cheap serial adapter!

I'm never skimping on cheap serial adapters again.