what facts do you dispute or question?
today, after reading this, I uninstalled the ftdi update on my win7 box, but it was too late. the driver was still mem-resident and when I plugged in a test dongle that I bought from amazon, it zeroed out the pid. I confirmed it by plugging it into a linux box and looking at /var/log/syslog. sure enough, the pid is all 0's and was NOT all 0's before (I had used that dongle on both win and linux just recently).
none of that is opinion. not sure what else you need, but people are not making this up..
I'd like to see the driver reprogramming the chip to set all 0's and/or the chip read before AND after that reveals the internal contents. Just because a driver for some as yet unknown reason fails to read the PID from the chip correctly and hence is unable to set the value in the OS control blocks from something other than the initialised 0's, doesn't leave the only remaining possibility that the chip is bricked.
I have one left (the rest of the boards I bought are still on a boat) so here it goes:
Before:
[178302.833023] usb 2-4.2.4: new full speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 43
[178303.303679] usb 2-4.2.4: New USB device found,
idVendor=0403, idProduct=6001[178303.303683] usb 2-4.2.4: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[178303.303686] usb 2-4.2.4: Product: FT232R USB UART
[178303.303688] usb 2-4.2.4: Manufacturer: FTDI
[178303.303690] usb 2-4.2.4: SerialNumber: A9U5PFN7
[178303.303779] usb 2-4.2.4: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[178303.350681] ftdi_sio 2-4.2.4:1.0: FTDI USB Serial Device converter detected
[178303.350702] usb 2-4.2.4: Detected FT232RL
[178303.350705] usb 2-4.2.4: Number of endpoints 2
[178303.350707] usb 2-4.2.4: Endpoint 1 MaxPacketSize 64
[178303.350710] usb 2-4.2.4: Endpoint 2 MaxPacketSize 64
[178303.350712] usb 2-4.2.4: Setting MaxPacketSize 64
[178303.351059] usb 2-4.2.4: FTDI USB Serial Device converter now attached to ttyUSB1
After:
[178453.772118] usb 2-4.2.4: reset full speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 43
[178454.052482] usb 2-4.2.4: device firmware changed
[178454.053230] usb 2-4.2.4: USB disconnect, address 43
[178454.127953] usb 2-4.2.4: new full speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 44
[178454.602228] usb 2-4.2.4: New USB device found,
idVendor=0403, idProduct=0000[178454.602231] usb 2-4.2.4: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[178454.602233] usb 2-4.2.4: Product: FT232R USB UART
[178454.602234] usb 2-4.2.4: Manufacturer: FTDI
[178454.602236] usb 2-4.2.4: SerialNumber: A9U5PFN7
[178454.602314] usb 2-4.2.4: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice