any known working USB/serial converters? [drifting off...]

[Rick Stevens]

fred smith wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 07, 2009 at 11:00:26AM -0700, Rick Stevens wrote:
>> Robert P. J. Day wrote:
>>> On Tue, 7 Jul 2009, Gene Heskett wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Tuesday 07 July 2009, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
>>>>> a while back, i was whining about the lack of functionality of a
>>>>> particular USB/serial converter:
>>>>>
>>>>> http://osdir.com/ml/fedora-test-list/2009-05/msg00398.html
>>>>>
>>>>> does anyone have such a converter that just plain works out of the
>>>>> box?  i'm more than happy to buy and try another brand if it's the
>>>>> prolific product that's causing the trouble.
>>>>>
>>>> prolific adapters are well known trouble.  FTDI seem to be pretty
>>>> transparent. I have several that Just Work(TM).
>>>  that's what i vaguely recall hearing once upon a time, so it's nice
>>> to have at least a bit of confirmation that i should hie me hence to
>>> the geek store and pick up another brand to test. thanks.
>> I also use an FTDI unit which hasn't failed me.  Uses the ftdi_sio
>> module and is identified as a FTCEGM4N in dmesg (USB ID 0403:6001).
> 
> Do these things work "both ways?" i.e., I assume they would work if one
> plugged the USB end into one's computer and got serial out the other end.
> But how about plugging the usb end into, e.g., a UPS and taking the serial
> end back to the linux box?

It should work, provided the UPS knew how to talk to the USB side of the
device (e.g. had a driver for it, etc.).  There's nothing special about
a computer's USB port as opposed to some other device with a USB port.

> someone earlier mentioned a tripplite UPS which got me to thinking of
> that situation: tripplite no longer offers USB-compatible software for
> Linux--their linux versions are still serial only. makes one wonder if
> one of these things would bridge the gap.

If you were to do a UPS->USB->SERIAL<->SERIAL->USB->computer thing,
you'd need a female-female null-modem adapter between the serial ports,
of course.
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