That's a good lesson for people always wanting the famous brands. FTDI chips are more expensive and not better than the other ones, they need a special driver and they are subject to counterfeiting. You take a no-name one, and you have a standard stuff.
It's a stupid USB to RS232, not a rocket control system, there should be no famous brand, it's the lowest of the commodities.
That said, I do have an FTDI USB to serial adapter (no idea of the authenticity), because I didn't know better or care, I needed to plug my MCU board to my computer and I bought the first one I found (and it's just used for debug, I never ever use serial in real life).
The FTDI chips and drivers also have the ability to toggle a few extra pins. If you are making a device this can be important enough to lure you away from just being a generic USB Communications Device Class profile. (Think a 'reset' function or a 'enter firmware update mode' function.)
Given that as a consumer/purchaser I have no way of knowing if I have a counterfeit chip or if the next batch produced by a manufacturer will have them… I now have an incentive to avoid FTDI entirely when given a choice.
Good remark. I didn't think about that, because I use a real USB chip for USB, I don't try to convert it to serial (I like the idea of having various communications going at once, the stall, etc.)
Does a lot more than just RS232. I believe it supports almost all serial protocols. Depending on what you're doing, it could be much more than just a simple display tty.
Is there even such a thing as a generic usb to serial chip for Windows? I ordered some ch340g chips from China, and now an nervous about installing a driver that might be malware.
It's a stupid USB to RS232, not a rocket control system, there should be no famous brand, it's the lowest of the commodities.
That said, I do have an FTDI USB to serial adapter (no idea of the authenticity), because I didn't know better or care, I needed to plug my MCU board to my computer and I bought the first one I found (and it's just used for debug, I never ever use serial in real life).