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Haplo
Joined: 06 Sep 2003
Posts: 659
Location: Sydney, Australia
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| FTDI Drivers |
 Posted: Thu Jul 01, 2004 10:04 pm |
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| Does anybody know if there are any drivers for FTDI USB to RS232 chips for Windows CE? Thanks. |
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rwyoung
Joined: 12 Nov 2003
Posts: 563
Location: Lawrence, KS USA
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| Posted: Fri Jul 02, 2004 7:45 am |
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Haplo,
The only ones I know about were listed on the FTDI page at
http://www.ftdichip.com/FTDriver.htm
The bad news is that of the two sources, one is not responding to emails anymore. The guys at FTDI suggest you get on their mailing list to be notified of future support.
Maybe FTDI's Korean rep will be of help. The page says to contact them for WinCE driver information.
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Rob Young
The Screw-Up Fairy may just visit you but he has crashed on my couch for the last month! |
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Haplo
Joined: 06 Sep 2003
Posts: 659
Location: Sydney, Australia
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| Posted: Sat Jul 03, 2004 3:50 am |
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Thanks Rob, I will contact them.
They should offer WinCE drivers for free, as they do for other operating systems. |
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rwyoung
Joined: 12 Nov 2003
Posts: 563
Location: Lawrence, KS USA
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| Posted: Sat Jul 03, 2004 9:43 am |
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I agree they should be free but I'm sure it is an economic issue. Too few requests for WinCE drivers and too high internal company costs for developing them. Couldn't sell enough chips to cover the expenses.
I can only remember one request by a client to me for WinCE development and after they learned how expensive it could be the opted for PalmOS devices instead.
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Rob Young
The Screw-Up Fairy may just visit you but he has crashed on my couch for the last month! |
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dyeatman
Joined: 06 Sep 2003
Posts: 1912
Location: Norman, OK
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| WinCE |
| Posted: Sat Jul 03, 2004 10:25 am |
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| Well at least MS has opened up the WinCE code to the public and that (hopefully) will make things better in the future.... |
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Guest
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| How about this |
| Posted: Sat Jul 03, 2004 11:03 am |
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| Haplo wrote: | Thanks Rob, I will contact them.
They should offer WinCE drivers for free, as they do for other operating systems. |
I'm not sure they should offer it for free... Why do so many people think the world should offer stuff for free !
Try this:
Download the WinCE driver SDK and write your own driver.
It's simple, in fact it's so simple MS gives you the skelton USB driver source code for free, and all you need do is modify it to emulate the functions of the other FTDI drivers....
When you have it working, lets see you offer it for free....
I'm waiting  |
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Haplo
Joined: 06 Sep 2003
Posts: 659
Location: Sydney, Australia
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| Re: How about this |
| Posted: Sat Jul 03, 2004 5:29 pm |
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| Anonymous wrote: |
I'm not sure they should offer it for free... Why do so many people think the world should offer stuff for free !
When you have it working, lets see you offer it for free....
I'm waiting |
They DO offer drivers for Win98/Me/2000/XP, MAC OS and Linux for free. A lot of people who design embedded deviced also use PDAs for data collection/setup/etc. So it would have been a good business move for them to offer the WinCE drivers free just like the drivers for other operating system. |
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rwyoung
Joined: 12 Nov 2003
Posts: 563
Location: Lawrence, KS USA
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| Re: How about this |
| Posted: Mon Jul 05, 2004 8:39 am |
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| Anonymous wrote: | | Haplo wrote: | Thanks Rob, I will contact them.
They should offer WinCE drivers for free, as they do for other operating systems. |
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I still say it is a matter of economics. As I understand FTDI, they are in the business of selling chips (USB stuff and they also do ASIC work). They are not in the business of selling software. However, to properly use their flagship product you need software. So, do you give away the software to sell more chips?
----- begin mind reading mode -----
If they (FTDI) feel there are enough potential sales involved, they probably would freely offer WinCE drivers. However it seems they don't so they have handed things off to a couple of their distributors/customers.
----- end mind reading mode -----
----- begin rant -----
A very common (and probably overused analogy) is that you can get the razor handle for free, but pay for the razor blades. Another example would be the FPGA/CPLD manufacturers that "give away" pretty powerfull versions of their development software. "Give away" is in quotes because they collect marketing data before you get the software. And they do leave some limits on the software but each year it just seems to be more and more powerfull with fewer and fewer limitation. 10-15 years ago I had to pay a pretty penny for VHDL and Verilog compilers. (Yes, I know I could have stopped my work to write my own but in a commercial environment that isn't so practical). Now I can do it for free.
And in the case of projects were thousands of chips per year are at stake, I ask the manufacture or manufacturer's representitive about free, cheap or deeply discounted tools. Sometimes I get a deal, other times I don't.
----- end rant -----
Halpo, if you do develop a driver yourself (and are legally allowed to distribute it) perhaps you should or at least see about cutting a deal with FTDI for a couple thousand chips in trade... 
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Rob Young
The Screw-Up Fairy may just visit you but he has crashed on my couch for the last month! |
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