Peter Ampt

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User-Friendly Installation of USBSerial Windows Driver

Hi All,

Is there a more "user-friendly" way of installing the USBSerial Windows Driver? The process described on http://developer.mbed.org/handbook/USBSerial works OK for me but the feedback I am getting from my clients is that this is a bit difficult for the average, non-technical user.

By the way, I have a fairly old Windows program that uses the serial port; it works OK with USB-serial bridge devices from FTDI and Silabs but not with the USBSerial Windows Driver. Has anyone else experienced this problem? Why would this happen? Is there any fix?

Thanks, Peter

Question relating to:

Last updated: 30 Apr 2020

Being that USBSerial uses usbser.sys could you try something described here? http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/ff538820%28v=vs.85%29.aspx Would be interested in seeing a write up about ways to do this!!

posted by Sam Grove 13 Jan 2015

Thanks Sam, Yes I had noted that USBSerial uses usbser.sys. I had seen the page you provided the link to however doing anything with this is outside my understanding and abilities. Is there a way of using the mbed Windows serial port driver here http://developer.mbed.org/handbook/Windows-serial-configuration with USBSerial. I have tried changing the VID to 0x0D28 and the PID to 0x0204 when I instantiate USBSerial in my software as follows: USBSerial usb (0x0d28, 0x0204, 0x0001, false); but obviously this alone is not sufficient as running the mbed Windows serial port driver installer does not successfully result in a serial port. I suppose I want my KL46Z to "look like" the mbed interface microcontroller and provide the usual mbed serial port. Any ideas on how to do this would be greatly appreciated. Peter

posted by Peter Ampt 14 Jan 2015

That isnt a good path forward. The VID is owned by ARM and there isn't explicit permission to use it in any form other than HDK based designs building from a single codebase. Can you publish a program and the driver config file you're using so someone can try to have a look at what is wrong with the particular setup you have going?

posted by Sam Grove 28 Jan 2015

Hi Peter,

I had a chance to look at some of the terminals you mentioned. I was able to confirm the behavior you were seeing in RealTerm, Bray Terminal, and Parallax Serial Terminal.

In RealTerm I was able to get it showing received data by setting the "Hardware Flow Control" option under the "Port" tab to "DTR/DSR".

In Bray Terminal, I had jump few a more hoops to fix the problem: 1) Click the DTR and RTS buttons at the bottom right of the screen. 2) Set "Handshaking" to "RTS/CTS" at the top of screen. 3) Hit the "Connect" button. 4) Change "Handshaking" to none.

I'm still investigating the USBSerial stack, but could you confirm that you can reproduce these results? The crux of the issue seems to be surrounding the DTR/DSR handshake. Maybe for your custom program you could look into enabling this option and see if that fixes some of your issues?

Thanks for keeping up with this and let me know what you find out!

All the best, Brian

posted by Brian Daniels 29 Jan 2015
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