USB to RS-485 Converter ~ Driver Issue

Development Boards Development Tools
1

Hi Sparkfun people!

I have been banging my head against a wall all week trying to get my windows 10 machine to recognize my Sparkfun USB to RS-485 Converter https://www.sparkfun.com/products/9822.

The description says there is a FT232RL driver available for windows but it doesn’t say which version of windows. I am under the impression that these are the drivers I need https://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/VCP.htm but I have had zero success. The device manager always sees the board as

Unknown USB device (Device Descriptor Request Failed)

I can force the .ini files as the driver for the device (as type: USB - Serial Converter) but it still shows it in the device manager with a caution sign. When I look at the driver details it says

“This device cannot start. (Code 10) A request for the USB device descriptor failed.”

Letting windows look for the driver doesn’t work either. Just stating that it already has the best driver for the device: Unknown USB device. Also I see a lot of the tutorials showing that the board should show up in “Other Devices” in the device manager. I don’t have this section (or Com ports) and it always shows up in Universal serial bus controllers.

I’ve been through the troubleshooting doc here: https://www.ftdichip.com/Support/Docume … s%2010.pdf

But my scenario isn’t listed.

Any thoughts? Anyone else had this issue with windows 10?

:?

  • Patrick
2

Here’s the drivers:

https://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/VCP.htm

Pick the 64 bit for Windows.

Here’s the installation guide:

https://www.ftdichip.com/Support/Docume … Guides.htm

3

Hi Dan,

Thanks for your response. As you can see in my post above; I have already installed the drivers at the link you provided using the guide at the link you provided. Both of these links are referenced in my original post as well.

My problem persists. Working on updating the BIOS on my system atm.

4

I’ve updated the BIOS on the system and even tried to just install the VCP drivers on another windows 10 system. Still no success.

How can I tell if the chip itself is malfunctioning?

5

So on the FTDI utilities page you can get a program that will tell you about how your system sees the USB devices attached to it called “USBView”. https://www.ftdichip.com/Support/Utilities.htm

The sparkfun product in question shows it has a blank VID and PID number…

Is this a red flag that my converter may be defective/broken? Most of the help documents say that situations like the one I have posted above may be the result of unsupported VID/PIDs.

Dan are you out there?

6

I am certainly out there but I would suggest you get in touch with SparkFun’s tech support group.

I don’t know how you cold tell if the chip is malfunctioning.

I also do not have an opinion as to the unsupported nature of blank VID / PID numbers.

7

So this has been resolved. It turns out the FTDI chip on my board was faulty. The PID and VID reading as 000 was the information tech support at sparkfun needed to call the board broken. Bought a new one and it works perfectly.