>I googled and found lots of these but all seemed
>to use a FT usb converter chip.

The cheapest and most common converter cables seem to use the Prolific 
chipset. I believe this is the cable that Wouter sells.

I cannot see any reason why one couldn't do it with a PIC, but I would have 
thought that would be more expensive than getting a cable (by the time you 
add the PCB, 2 connectors & misc parts, to say nothing of your 
programme-debug time) unless you were already going to be doing something 
that required a processor. 

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