Today, doing a little more research and experimentation I found out something I suspect Bandridge would rather keep secret.
The Bandridge CPL4201 USB to serial adapter is actually a Pacific PL2303. You can get the driver from Pacific themselves here.
There are drivers there for versions of Windows from ’98 to 7, and the vast majority of in-between versions too. Also there are drivers for WinCE, Mac OS 8, 9, 10.1 and above, and for Red Hat Linux. (A modern Linux kernel will have the driver built in)
For completeness’s sake the CPL4201 gives this response to “lsusb” on my Ubuntu system:
“Bus 006 Device 003: ID 067b:2303 Prolific Technology, Inc. PL2303 Serial Port”
The important parts are the Vendor ID 067B, and the Product ID 2303.
There is a similar, but incompatible, USB to serial adapter based on the PL2303X but someone has already found out about it and come up with a patch.
For the record, the CPL4201 I have is a vanilla PL2303.
The summary seems to be:
* Bandridge can’t be bothered to redirect enquires about Windows drivers to the Pacific driver page (link above).
* Bandridge don’t want to take thirty seconds to re-package the Pacific driver with their branding.
* I now own two USB to serial port adapters (woo-yay!?). One of them might be adapted like this in the future.
Therefore I say: Bandridge – you suck.