Further to the Bandridge CPL4201 USB to serial adapter: A fix!

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.

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Open letter to Bandridge, about their product support.

To whom it concerns,

I was genuinely surprised to read in an email from yourselves that you consider “product CPL4201 is already to old to support Windows 7”. This falls far short of the high standards of workmanship and quality I would expect from a world leader such as yourselves.

I bought this USB to serial adapter cable about five years ago. Prima Facie five years ago nobody would have known that Microsoft were going to launch Windows Vista and subsequently Windows 7. As these versions of Microsoft’s very popular operating system were advertised to the general public, developers like yourselves would have had advance notification and technical details long before the general public knew anything about it.

A moment’s casual research on ebay reveals there are innumerable USB to serial cables available, many of which advertise full compatibility with Windows 7. So there’s no real technical prohibition to prevent you from cobbling together a driver for a single Integrated Circuit which does all the heavy lifting for you.

I now feel I have no choice in the following actions:
* I will never again buy any product with your name on it.
* I will not recommend to any-one else they purchase any product with your name on it.

You have sullied your reputation by refusing to make a reasonable effort to prevent your products becoming obsolete in a very competitive marketplace. I also believe that a significant number of these devices will finish their lives prematurely in land-fill, thus contributing to the larger electronic waste problem.