I too was puzzled by the move to replace serial ports with USB. It looks to
me like a case of deliberate obsolescence; they replaced a system of low
complexity with a system with very high complexity.  I've been told it was
a way to force the world's many 386/486/pentiums into oblivion by cutting
off support for the serial ports (DOS).

I am working now on using a PIC in host mode using the Cypress SL811HS. I
think the user end is well represented with several solutions, including
MChip's PIC16C745 (a PIC16C73 with enhanced memory and a USB engine).

The problem with USB will be the same problem afflicting all layered
solutions- nobody will be able to determine where the problem is, so
everyone can blame everybody else.
.
Sounds like Microsoft plotting and scheming, burning the midnight oil....

--Bob

At 02:50 PM 6/23/2003 -0700, you wrote:
>Problem:
>The formerly ubiquitous RS232 serial ports on PC's has become
>"un-ubiquitous"  replaced by the now even more ubiquitous USB port.
>
>We have many products that used 232 to talk to PC's; what is the easiest
>way to modify them for USB operation?  And by modify, I mean production
>wise, not just one or two.
>
>What I'm wondering about is putting a USB adapter chip on my circuit board
>(no dongles or external adapters).  Where a PIC used to go through
>something like a MAX232 level shifter to the board edge, I now want to put
>something perhaps like the FTDI245BM chip. Or a Microchip part. Or a
>Cypress part. Or ?
>
>Is it possible to just buy a chip solution and put it on the board such
>that I talk to it via my serial data lines so my PIC code is for the most
>part unaltered?  And furthermore, is it possible to do so without needing
>to write PC-side drivers or know about descriptors or other USB stuff?  For
>many of my applications, data rate equivalents of around 9600 to 115,200
>will do fine.  And for some, very low amounts of data; maybe 10 to
>100Kbytes total at a connection.  Bit-bucket apps.
>
>I'm guessing this has been addressed by a large-ish subset of PIC'sters by
>now.  Thanks for any ideas here.
>
>Tom M.
>
>--
>http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different
>ways.  See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details.

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