On Mon, Feb 10, 2014 at 8:42 AM, Michael Walker <va3mw@portcredit.net> wrote:

I also believe that the current FTDI chipset will remember its com port number even if you plug it into a different USB port which is nice and you aren't plugging the cable in only to tell you it is Com54. :) Hence the reason you might want to clean up your old ports with what I sent earlier.

It is hard to solve if you only get the USB to radio programming cable and you have no choice but to back rev their driver.

If you go for the RS232 to radio programming cable, then you do have the option of using a USB certified RS232 port. Going back to the RS232 (DB9 connector) is my failsafe that always works.

Mike va3mw

Mike,

I believe you are correct about the FTDI cable using the same com port for different USB ports. I never tried, but I assume it is smart enough to change if 2 or more cables are plugged in at the same time.

Even though Windows installs another driver (the wrong one in the case of an unauthorized Prolific chip copy), you can then go into the Device Manager to select the older driver and same port as before. So if you take the time up front, you can set the front ports of your computer, for example, to the same driver version and com port number. Then it won't matter which port you plug the USB cable into.

Jim KC9HI