


ProlificĪdmittedly, I’m less certain about this part of the amazing trick.Īs far as I am aware, there are only two manufacturers of USB-to-Serial converter chips at the moment: FTDI and Prolific. I had no idea because the last time I tried using a USB-to-Serial cable on macOS was with version 10.8. I can’t find the Engadget article about the five minute time slot Phil Schiller devoted to announcing this revolutionary innovation at WWDC, but here is the official Apple tech note.
#HOW TO MONITOR USB TO SERIAL MAC OS DRIVERS#
MacOS includes kernel drivers for FTDI chips as of version 10.9, aka “Mavericks”, released in 2013. Use a version of macOS newer than 10.9 and use a cable with FTDI chip.ĭo this and you will never have to fuzz around with manually installing drivers from shady websites! And you can now unplug the USB-to-Serial cable while your computer is sleeping without provoking a crash – amazing! macOS >= 10.9 comes with (working) FTDI drivers How do I know this? Because I wasted three long nights debugging the problem.īut I’m a changed person now because I learned this one amazing trick for making USB-to-Serial just work on macOS: The one I pulled out of a drawer this week randomly flipped the most significant bit of every character. My relationship with USB-to-Serial cables has been one of disappointments, crashed computers, and garbled data.

One simple trick for USB-to-Serial on MacOS XĬall me a Luddite if you wish, but I lament the lack of serial ports in modern laptops.
