Installing a USB Serial Adapter on Mac OS X

Posted on 12. Jul, 2011 by in Tips

The easiest way to go about installing our Plugable USB to Serial adapter is by starting with the device.

  • If you want to verify that the adapter and the driver were installed properly click here

Connect the device to the Mac. Once connected click on the Apple icon and on ‘About This Mac’

Click on ‘More Info…’

Click on ‘USB’ on the left and on the ‘USB-Serial Controller D’
If all is well you should be seeing something like this:

Time to get the driver! Fire up Safari and browse to http://plugable.com/drivers/prolific/ and scroll down to Mac.
Click on the ‘PL2303 MacOSX10.6 dmg v.1.4.0.zip’, the Safari Downloads window should come up:

Double click on the md_PL23-3_MacOSX10

Now double click on the PL2303_1.4.0.dmg to mount the image

Now double click on the PL2303_1.4.0 to start the installation

Once the installer comes up click ‘Continue’ to proceed.

Then ‘Select a Destination’ click on your desired drive and click ‘Continue’ to move forward

Now just click ‘Install’ to continue.

You may be asked of your username and password – enter them and click ‘OK’

You’ll get a warning about restarting the computer after the installation is complete. This is normal, click ‘Continue Installation‘.

Installing should start (takes a couple of minutes to complete)

When it’s done you should see this:

Click on ‘Restart’ to reboot the Mac.

 After you restart, check that everything has installed OK.
On the Mac there are two methods to determine this:

Method 1:
Click on ‘Applications’

Click on ‘Utilities’

Click on ‘Terminal’

Type:
kextstat | grep prolific
and:
ioreg -c IOSerialBSDClient | grep usb
Your results should be very close to this:

Method 2:
Click on ‘System Preferences’

Click on ‘Network’

Now click on the ‘+’ sign on the bottom left, and then on the ‘Select the interface and enter a name for the new Service’ click on ‘Interface’ – you should be seeing the ‘USB-Serial Controller D’ there.

This will create a “Network” interface for a modem or serial port. Because it’s a serial port, it’ll say “Not Configured” and that’s normal:

From the “Advanced” button you can change default settings (usually not needed). And this won’t change the “Not Configured” message – that’s still ok.

Now finally, you need an application which will talk to the serial port. On Mac, the file which maps to the port is /dev/cu.usbserial. If you have a null modem cable and a terminal program on the other side, the Mac actually has a built-in terminal program called “screen” that you can use to test the connection.

Once that is up and connected (and if the serial ports are set to the same baud rate and paramters), you can type on either side and see the characters come across.

Support

USB Serial on the Mac is a real melding of the very new and very old. If you have any trouble, just visit plugable.com/products/pl2303-db9/support/ to see existing FAQs for Plugable’s USB Serial adapter.

Where to Buy

Plugable USB to RS-232 DB9 Serial Adapter (Prolific PL2303HX Chipset) Product Details $11.95

Turning One Computer Into Four With Userful and Plugable

Posted on 07. Jul, 2011 by in Tips

Modern PCs have spare computing power. If it were possible to share a PC among many users, you could save a significant amount of money and energy.

There is a new generation of simple USB hardware devices, and operating system software which support them, which now enable this.

Our Plugable DC-125 Docking Station is one of these USB devices, and below we’re showing how it works in combination with Userful Multiseat Linux 2011.

Microsoft’s Windows Multipoint Server 2011 product is better known than Userful, but Userful has a significant advantage – if you’re willing to run Linux, it offers better per-client performance and scalability in terms of the number of stations supported per PCs.

Take a look at the video below to see Userful in action with a single PC and several of our Plugable DC-125 Docking Clients.

Let us know if you have any questions about how our solution works. And read and see more at our product page.

Installing the Plugable USB to RS-232 DB9 Serial Adapter on Windows 7

Posted on 05. Jul, 2011 by in Windows

Windows 7 will detect and pop up a wizard to install drivers when our Plugable USB to Serial adapter is plugged in, but it’s also easy (as essential on other operating systems) to install the driver software first. Here’s how.

Get the driver from: http://plugable.com/drivers/prolific/

You’ll want to download the driver and unzip it anywhere on your desktop. Once you have, double click on it to start the installation.

The installation is relatively simple and no questions are asked. When it’s done you should see something like this:

Now go ahead and connect the adapter. You should get a pop-up looking like this:

Finally Windows should report that the device has been installed:

On Device Manager you should be looking at something like this:

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