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I have an USB <-> RS232 converter with no designation of producer on it. After plugging it into USB port on Windows Vista 64bit computer I chose an option to automatically find and install drivers from Windows Update site. Drivers (for USB Serial Converter and USB Serial Port) were successfully installed. In Device Manager, in section Universal Serial Bus controllers in context menu for USB Serial Converter in the field Manufacturer there's FTDI.

How can I find out which type of chip (I guess it's one of those listed at http://www.ftdichip.com/Products/ICs.htm) is used in my converter?

EDIT

Hardware Id is USB\VID_0403&PID_6001&REV_0400

ChipGenius reports this

Device Name: +USB Serial Converter

PnP Device ID: VID = 0403 PID = 6001 Serial Number: FTDIC6JT Revision: (Information not returned)

Device Type: Standard USB device - USB2.0 Full-Speed (USB1.1)

Chip Vendor: (No match record) Chip Part-Number: (No match record)

Product Vendor: USB Product Model: Serial Converter

Tools on Web: (N/A)

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  • Is this strictly for curiosity's sake, or is there a pragmatic reason why you need to care?
    – Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams
    Aug 28, 2011 at 11:08
  • I need to know the chipset so that I could find out what's voltage on serial side. I'd like to use this cable as JTAG cable to connect with Linksys WRT300N and WRT350N routers and debrick them. That's why it has to be 3,3V and not 5V.
    – Piotr Dobrogost
    Aug 28, 2011 at 11:27
  • Its a FTDI chip, not sure which one though, you may never figure that out...search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/…
    – Moab
    Aug 29, 2011 at 22:23

3 Answers 3

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Try USBDeview to get the vendor ID, then look it up on a vendor list here or here

. enter image description here

Or use Device manager to find the vendor ID

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There is also a utility called chip genius referred to on this page .

enter image description here

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  • Vendor ID is 0403 (see my update to the question) but neither of the above tools is able to tell what product (by name) it is much less what chipset is used.
    – Piotr Dobrogost
    Aug 29, 2011 at 17:52
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It appears there's no reliable way to find out what chipset is used. I wrote to FTDI's support giving VID and PID and they replied it's FT232B chipset. However, when I proposed to put mapping from VID,PID to chipset on their site Gordon Lunn from FTDI replied

VID/PID does not guarantee a chip type or how it is used. Customers can change these parameters in an EEPROM.

Much less one can find out what settings were applied; when I asked

Is it possible to know voltage level (3,3V or 5V)?

Gordon replied

Not without physically measuring them.

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There is an open source library -- libftdi [1] -- that can read the chip eeprom and decode the chip type from it's values, but this assumes no one messed with the eeprom data.

The eeprom has some extra IDs on it, and the library knows how to map those IDs to the right chip.
Off course this assumes the eeprom was not modified latter after the factory release, but for the general case this doesn't happen, so maybe it's enough for you.

[1] http://www.intra2net.com/en/developer/libftdi/

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