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 $12.95

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:

How to change the COM port for a USB Serial adapter on Windows 7

Posted on 04. Jul, 2011 by in Windows

Start by going to the Device Manager. Once there do the following:
Expand the Ports ‘(COM& LPT)’

You should be looking at something like this:

As you can see Windows has set the port to COM10. However many legacy applications expect the port to be between 1-4. Let’s change that:
Right click on the device and click on ‘Properties’.

Click on ‘Port Settings’. Then click on ‘Advanced…’.

Once you’re in ‘Advanced Settings for COM10’ on the bottom you can see the ‘COM Port Number: COM10’. Click on that to change it to the lowest possible number (between 1-4).

Then click ‘OK’ on all open Property Windows.
Now the device should look like this: