|
Virtual COM Port Drivers for Ross-Tech
USB Interfaces
Older Ross-Tech RS-232
Serial interfaces can be set to power up as "dumb
K-Line pass through"
interfaces. This allowed those old Serial interfaces
to be compatible with a wide variety of third-party
applications which expect a "K-line pass-through" serial
interface. However, our USB interfaces
present additional challenges. Early
in their development, we found a number of technical
advantages to using a "direct" USB driver which bypasses
the Windows Serial drivers entirely. Hence
the USB drivers that ship with VCDS do not emulate a
serial COM port and cannot be used with applications that
expect to communicate via a serial port.
NOTE: The following applies to our
legacy USB interfaces (HEX-USB, KII-USB and
HEX-USB+CAN). It does NOT apply to our
current HEX-V2 or HEX-NET interfaces. These
new interfaces do not use a USB UART chip and cannot be be
used for "dumb K-line pass-through"!
In order to facilitate the use of
third-party applications which expect to communicate with a serial
interface, drivers that emulate a COM port are available.
However, anyone thinking about using them needs to be aware of the
following points:
-
We do not offer installation support for these drivers. They
should be used only by someone who is competent/comfortable
installing (and possible uninstalling) USB drivers on his PC.
-
We cannot offer any support for third-party software, nor any
guarantee that it will work correctly with these drivers. Of
course, the same would apply with a serial interface as well.
That said, here some installation
notes:
-
These drivers are compatible with
Windows 2000 and newer. They should work with W2K,
XP-32, XP-64, Vista-32 and Vista-64. We do not
have any VCP drivers for Windows 98!
-
Unzip the contents of the download
into a new folder.
-
With an interface plugged in, find
it in Device Manager, right-click it, and select Update Driver.
-
Depending on what drivers your
system already has installed, you may have to "force" these by
telling the wizard not to search, but to let you specify what
driver to install, then doing the Have Disk and Browse thing.
-
There's also the possibility that
the Virtual COM Port won't install automatically. We've
found no real pattern why it does on some systems and not on
others. If it does not, find the interface in Device > Manager.
The name should show "... with VCP". Open the properties sheet,
click the Advanced tab, and make sure Load VCP is checked. Once
checked, disconnect and re-connect the interface.
-
Once the USB Serial Port is
installed, you may need to change the COM Port Number (depending
on how high a number the applications supports). Device
Manager, Properties sheet for the USB Serial Port, Port Settings
tab, Advanced button. The COM Port Number may change if you plug
the interface into a different USB port, so I'd recommend always
using the same USB port.
-
VCDS should continue to work fine
with these drivers installed. Leave VCDS set to USB, not a
Virtual COM Port!
Assuming you've read and understand all of the above, you can
download the "Virtual COM Port" drivers here:
Home
Products
VCDS
Product Information
Interfaces
TWIN-USB
KII-USB
HEX-USB+CAN
Virtual COM Port Drivers
|
