FTDIgate 2.0?

[AlxDroidDev]

I haven't seen anyone suggest a viable alternative to fight clones.

How about not using FTDI chips in the first place? It's not like we don't have alternatives. I can list at least 5 alternatives.

Now, what would really do an impact on this problem is if China had rigid regulations and control mechanisms on counterfeiting, but then half of their economy would collapse. The Chinese government simply doesn't care about it, don't see it as a problem and I sometimes think they even enforce the practice.

I wonder - and this is an honest doubt - if FTDI can have external markings on their chips that make it harder to counterfeit or make it really obvious it is a counterfeit. Some IRF FETs are often counterfeited as well, but the fake ones are easy to spot.

[Sal Ammoniac]

I haven't seen anyone suggest a viable alternative to fight clones.

How about not using FTDI chips in the first place? It's not like we don't have alternatives. I can list at least 5 alternatives.

So because a part is cloned we shouldn't use it? Brilliant logic. 

[os40la]

Because it works? Because I've had fewer blue screens in the last few years than I've had kernel panics on Linux? Because a lot of good software (like Photoshop) only runs on Windows and I won't accept poor substitutes (like the Gimp)?

FYI. Photoshop runs on Unix too.  .  I do agree about Windows being a valid and good OS to use. I use it on my MAC to run CAD. I run whatever OS is needed for my tool. I don't pick my tool to fit my OS. I pick my OS to fit my tool.  If 'you' follow this rule then 'you' will have a much better experience running the tools to get the job done.   

[f4eru]

So because a part is cloned we shouldn't use it? Brilliant logic. 

No. The point is : Because FTDI is a malware company, and you are at risk if you use them to be fucked and having to recall and replace thousands of products, just use an equivalent chip from a serious company that will not punish and burn you.

[nctnico]

So because a part is cloned we shouldn't use it? Brilliant logic. 

No. The point is : Because FTDI is a malware company, and you are at risk if you use them to be fucked and having to recall and replace thousands of products, just use an equivalent chip from a serious company that will not punish and burn you.

I more or less agree. My biggest worry with using FTDI chips is that I can never be 100% sure real chips end up in my products and I cannot be sure that the current driver and future drivers won't produce a false positive every now and then. I want my products to work and keep working! FTDI and/or my supplier messing up means I have to do a lot of extra work and my reputation for delivering good products becomes damaged. The only way I can make 100% sure I will never get burned by FTDI issues in any form is to use a chip which isn't cloned. Part of running a business is about reducing risks.

[dannyf]

taking the end customer hostage

If the "end customer" bought a fake, s/he probably doesn't qualify as an "end customer" for FTDI: after all, there hasn't any report of FTDI driver not working with real FTDI chips.

Tough to fault FTDI not caring about their non-customers.

[f4eru]

If the "end customer" bought a fake, s/he probably doesn't qualify as an "end customer" for FTDI

The end customer did not buy a fake. The end customer bought a product which was delivered with an adapter that was bought from a retailer which bought it from a manufacturer which let the PCB be assembled by an assembler which purchased chips sold as "FT232" from a reseller which got a roll of fake chips.
In real life, add at least 3 level on that supply chain....

[dannyf]

The end customer did not buy a fake. The end customer bought ... fake chips.

So the end customer bought a fake, may not knowingly, but a fake nonetheless.

It is like your employer hired a fake "f4eru" based on a resume and promise of performance. After finding out that the fake "f4eru" did not quite perform, the employer went to you and demanded that you come to do the job he had paid the fake "f4eru" to perform.

Per your own argument, you would think the employer is justified,

[madires]

taking the end customer hostage

If the "end customer" bought a fake, s/he probably doesn't qualify as an "end customer" for FTDI: after all, there hasn't any report of FTDI driver not working with real FTDI chips.

Tough to fault FTDI not caring about their non-customers.

<end customer mode>
I don't know anything about usb serial converters or FTDI. But when my computer doesn't talk to my iGadget and a quick search shows something like "FTDI driver problem ... fake chips", I could blame the manufacturer for using fake chips or blame FTDI for breaking my iGadget, since I don't know nothing about fake chips or care about that. Why do they put a driver into Windows that breaks my iGadget? It worked all the time until now. So, who's the culprit? It's FTDI.
</end customer mode>

[dannyf]

I don't know anything ... So, who's the culprit?

You answered your own question perfectly, without even trying.

good job,

[AlxDroidDev]

taking the end customer hostage

If the "end customer" bought a fake, s/he probably doesn't qualify as an "end customer" for FTDI: after all, there hasn't any report of FTDI driver not working with real FTDI chips.

Tough to fault FTDI not caring about their non-customers.

Well, the customer might not see it that way: how many end customers willingly bought fake FTDI chips? I, for one, am not one of them, and I did fall vicitim of FTDI because of a fake FT232RL. In my case, the chip has both VID and PID set to 0x0000, so it's permanently bricked. Until then, as far as I knew, I was an end customer customer of FTDI. I agree that FTDI didn't have to see it that way, but bricking my chip was a really bad move, and a shot at the only innocent party in this whole ordeal.

It's easy to fault FTDI on their business model:
- out of all of the USB-to-UART chips out there, the FT232RL is one of the most expensive (if not THE most expensive). If they made it cheaper, not only it would sell a lot more, but they might even take some space from the fakes.
- they attacked the customer who, most of the time, was unaware that their chip was a fake, and damaged their products

[dannyf]

Well, the customer might not see it that way:

The customer can see it whatever way it wishes to see. Whether there is a valid basis for his perspective remains to be seen.

I did fall vicitim of FTDI because of a fake FT232RL.

The only way you could fall victim of FTDI if they sold you the fake FT232RL chip. Otherwise, you fell victim of your own and/or the person who sold you the fake chip.

bricking my chip was a really bad move,

I am sure FTDI has a different perspective: they wrote a set of procedure that works flawlessly on the genuine chip. You happen to plug your fake chip there and ...

It's easy to fault FTDI on their business model:
- out of all of the USB-to-UART chips out there, the FT232RL is one of the most expensive (if not THE most expensive).

So their crime is they sold their products on a free market to the highest bidder.

By that logic, could someone blame you for wanting to get paid the most for your services on the labor market? The losers whom you rejected for higher pays somewhere else get the right to sue you?

[Sal Ammoniac]

So because a part is cloned we shouldn't use it? Brilliant logic. 

No. The point is : Because FTDI is a malware company, and you are at risk if you use them to be fucked and having to recall and replace thousands of products, just use an equivalent chip from a serious company that will not punish and burn you.

If I use FTDI how will I be fucked? Does the FTDI driver do bad things with genuine FTDI chips? I have never heard of any evidence that this occurs, so once again, tell me exactly how I'll be fucked if I use genuine FTDI chips in a product...

[os40la]

 

[mtdoc]

It's entertaining to watch the FTDI apologists twist and turn to justify FTDI's tactics. 

The bottom line remains the same: People who unknowingly bought products with fake FTDI chips are being harmed and FTDI's actions are alienating their own customers. 

They are being outdone by other companies with competing products and their actions regarding clones, whether justified or not, are only exacerbating migration of their customers to those alternatives as well as generating a feeling of ill will towards the FTDI brand.

[FrankBuss]

BTW, regarding the quality of their IP: I just tested the SPI mode of the FT2232H with their sample application for the D2XX driver and the SPI_ReadWrite function (with SPI_TRANSFER_OPTIONS_CHIPSELECT_ENABLE and SPI_TRANSFER_OPTIONS_CHIPSELECT_DISABLE, the only modification I made is to transfer 2 bytes). This is how it looks like:

"GENUINE FTDI DEVICE FOUND" CONGRATS" PC will self destruct in 50..49..48..47 etc countdown seconds!

Yeah, it's hilarious. For the record: it is already broken in the original code without my modifications (but some chips might work with such a CS strobe signal). Even if I uncomment the define "DEVELOPMENT_FIXED_CS" in fdti_spi.c. Apperently "development" didn't fix it, and the workaround doesn't work either Now trying bitbang mode.

[uno]

I've designed and built product using FTDI chips.  Real ones, that were bought from a reputable distributor.

I've known since the specification phase that the windows drivers were licensed only to be used with genuine parts.

I make my living designing and building things, and I totally sympathize with FTDI, and I support what they did.

The drivers for FTDI chips are FTDI's property.  Pretty much standard license terms.  Every time a clone chip uses FTDI's driver, FTDI loses money.  To a product manufacturer, this is an untenable position.

The change that FTDI made to their driver causes the driver to not work properly with cloned chips.  It is not "bricking" the chips, the learned from their 2014 mistake.  The driver just won't work right with them, it injects some text into the serial data stream, and the text describes the problem.  Short of doing nothing, that is the only way they can notify the user that the device is counterfeit.  It's not possible to pop up a message box from inside a device driver.  It may be possible to make some text appear in the device driver's properties box and FTDI might have done this, but somebody would have to look for it.

I have a ton of USB to serial converters around here, and I standardized FTDI after too much trouble with Prolific.  There's a non-zero chance I have one with a fake chip in it, and if that is the case, I'm gonna take my lumps and send hate mail to the vendor, if they are still in business.

Maybe the counterfeiters can write their own driver.  Somehow I doubt that.  When you steal IP, you will probably lose.  When you buy product with stolen IP in it (even if you did not know) it is analogous to receiving stolen property, and you lose.

Uno

[miguelvp]

It's entertaining to watch the FTDI apologists twist and turn to justify FTDI's tactics. 

The bottom line remains the same: People who unknowingly bought products with fake FTDI chips are being harmed and FTDI's actions are alienating their own customers. 

They are being outdone by other companies with competing products and their actions regarding clones, whether justified or not, are only exacerbating migration of their customers to those alternatives as well as generating a feeling of ill will towards the FTDI brand.

Not really, they are being harmed by whoever sold them the product. Otherwise we all should get Walmart Quality for everything we purchase no matter if you buy at Neiman Marcus you still get the fake stuff.

So take it back to the store and force the manufacturers to check their supplies. Letting fakes taint the distribution chains doesn't help anyone other than the counterfeiters.

Again No one responded yet about purchasing the fake Art Of Electronics 3rd edition or forcing the authors to bring the price down to the same cost as the counterfeiters.

Hey Walmart is good at that, making local companies compete to cheap import prices but with local quality and bringing full companies down because if the company doesn't agree then they can't sell there, if they do, they probably do it at a loss but is better than loosing it all.
 

[mtdoc]

Again No one responded yet about purchasing the fake Art Of Electronics 3rd edition or forcing the authors to bring the price down to the same cost as the counterfeiters.

That is entirely different.

If Horowitz and Hill were breaking into peoples homes and burning or defacing the copies people had unknowingly bought - then that might be analogous.

No one here has been defending the cloners. The issue is the way FTDI is responding.

[nctnico]

More food for thought:
What FDTI is doing is basically being a vigilante. Now imagine the grocery store around the corner gets robbed while your wife and children are shopping. Instead of just handing over the money to the robber, hand over the camera footage to the police and collect the insurance money later on the store owner decides to try to shoot the robber but kills your wife and children instead. How would everyone feel about that? I can't imagine a sane person being satisfied by that outcome! My point is: there is a legal system in place for a good reason and that is catching the real bad guys and to prevent collateral damage!

[suicidaleggroll]

Oh c'mon.  Lighting counterfeits on fire?  Shooting your wife and children?

There's a bit of a disconnect between that and sending out a message that says "non genuine device found"...

Does anybody here have an actual, real, USB->UART equipped device, in your possession, that would explode, go on a killing rampage, or otherwise be permanently destroyed if you were to plug it into your computer, open up hyper terminal, and type "NON GENUINE DEVICE FOUND" with your keyboard?  I HIGHLY HIGHLY doubt it.

[donotdespisethesnake]

Finally, FTDI having clone trouble is inevitable. Their chips are too expensive, and they are using the same design for years. Microchip, WCH and Silabs all have perfect substitutes for 1/4 of its price, probably even cheaper than clone FTDIs.

I don't see that - Digikey prices, $, 1000q

MCP2221   1.62
CP2104      1.25
FT230XQ    1.48

I didn't look for equivalent packages, but they are pretty much in the same ballpark.

[Monkeh]

Finally, FTDI having clone trouble is inevitable. Their chips are too expensive, and they are using the same design for years. Microchip, WCH and Silabs all have perfect substitutes for 1/4 of its price, probably even cheaper than clone FTDIs.

I don't see that - Digikey prices, $, 1000q

MCP2221   1.62
CP2104      1.25
FT230XQ    1.48

I didn't look for equivalent packages, but they are pretty much in the same ballpark.

People in this thread are conveniently ignoring the modern, lower cost FTDI solutions, because it doesn't fit the bashing.

[suicidaleggroll]

I am not going to feed you.  If you are serious then what I can say is please get some real exposure from the industries.

I take it you disagree with something I said.  Care to elaborate, or would you like to continue implying anybody who doesn't agree with you is an idiot who can safely be ignored, all while providing absolutely nothing to back up that view?

[ve7xen]

I find it hilarious how strongly the FTDI apologists think their IP protection should be. Even with western-style IP overreach, the only IP violation of the counterfeits is their outer markings. If they were unmarked, or marked with the manufacturer's markings, they would be totally legal. Reverse engineering and cloning is even encouraged and explicitly allowed for in the functional IP protection that exists. The PC BIOS being cloned in a very similar manner is often touted as the reason for the commodification of PCs. Nobody is claiming the masks were stolen (or the counterfeits would any test...).

Thanks to Windows Update they don't even need to distribute the driver with the device, which means they don't have to violate FTDI's copyright on the driver, it will just load itself anyway.

Using FTDI's VID/PID is perhaps questionable, but so far I don't think IP protection has extended to magic 16-bit numbers.

Their driver can do whatever it wants short of causing permanent damage as they did before, but they are deluded if they think it will do any good whatsoever. The cheap products will do a better job of cloning or move to a different, cheaper chip, and I guarantee they will lose some design wins as a result of engineers avoiding their antics. Getting into an arms race with cloners of what is almost a commodity item at this point is insane. They will lose, and waste lots of money and customer good will doing so.