Supposed I want to mix and match Arduino's and Ch340 serial enabled products. The Ch340 chips are clearly marked, so they are not counterfeit.
AFAIK, chips have been destroyed by FTDI's attempts to thwart both imposters and competition alike. It appears that they are still inhibiting other serial chips. While FDTI should not have to support their competition, they have done bad things to people as well as their competition.
I wanted to try the CH340 Arduino compatibles. They aren't a little less that a real Arduino; they are 1/5th as much. Though, even if they have Atmel chips, I do have USB issues. Is that FDTI's intentional doing, or not.
I have FTDI drivers on my system. Why is there no uninstaller? What other product would your tolerate on your system that has Windows drivers with no installer? Would you put up with having to put up with plug and pray stings to uninstall a printer driver?
More problems and questions arise. Does any of the current Arduinos/Genunos have FTDI chips in them? Do I send my money to a company that engages in anti-competitive practices, casting doubt that even the whole Arduino thing is open, or not.
I use FTDI modules with my 328/1284/2560 boards, onboard and offboard.
Digikey & Mouser don't carry CH340, I won't design in something I can't purchase.
BrendaEM:
I have FTDI drivers on my system. Why is there no uninstaller? What other product would your tolerate on your system that has Windows drivers with no installer?
chips have been destroyed by FTDI's attempts to thwart both imposters and competition alike.
Do you have a reference for the FTDI drivers ever "destroying" a chip that didn't present an FTDI USB Vendor ID? I haven't heard of any such thing (though I've seen a couple people claim that non-FTDI implementations trying to use the driver are somehow "legitimate" rather than imposters: "It's a completely different chip with an FTDI vendor code; you can't call that a "clone", can you?" grr.)
I've also never heard of the FTDI drivers hurting a CH340 chip...
Does any of the current Arduinos/Genunos have FTDI chips in them?
They do not. And have not for years.
"Official-ish" Arduino Nanos still use an FTDI chip. Something that claims to be an FTDI chip, anyway. It's not clear that even the official, genuine, Arduino Nanos ever used "genuine" FTDI chips - Nano users who claimed to have bought them from official distributors were hard hit by the FTDI driver updates...
BrendaEM:
Arduino's are supposed to be open hardware.
Supposed I want to mix and match Arduino's and Ch340 serial enabled products. The Ch340 chips are clearly marked, so they are not counterfeit.
AFAIK, chips have been destroyed by FTDI's attempts to thwart both imposters and competition alike. It appears that they are still inhibiting other serial chips. While FDTI should not have to support their competition, they have done bad things to people as well as their competition.
I wanted to try the CH340 Arduino compatibles. They aren't a little less that a real Arduino; they are 1/5th as much. Though, even if they have Atmel chips, I do have USB issues. Is that FDTI's intentional doing, or not.
I have FTDI drivers on my system. Why is there no uninstaller? What other product would your tolerate on your system that has Windows drivers with no installer? Would you put up with having to put up with plug and pray stings to uninstall a printer driver?
More problems and questions arise. Does any of the current Arduinos/Genunos have FTDI chips in them? Do I send my money to a company that engages in anti-competitive practices, casting doubt that even the whole Arduino thing is open, or not.
When I buy a new official, what do I also buy?
FTDI counterfeit chips are clearly marked as FTDI. If there are CH340G counterfeits they will be clearly marked too, and you won't know the difference. A counterfeit is only counterfeit because you can't tell it's genuine or not. For all you know, all the CH340G chips you have are counterfeit. If you ran the FTDI company, what would you do to battle counterfeits? FTDI is not anti-competitive when they take action to prevent their drivers from working with chips they didn't manufacture. They did one thing in one version of their drivers to brick non-genuine chips, and that may be stinky and an unpopular move, but it was not anti-competitive.