Beware: Keyspan failures

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dmknuth

Bit poster
We have been using Keyspan USA-19HS USB to serial converters for about three years with both Mac OS X and Windows applications, with Windows provided by Virtual PC and now through Parallels.

In the past month 4 of the 5 have stopped working. All failed while connecting/disconnecting from a Mac Book while running Windows XP via Parallels (build 3214). The converters no longer work with native Mac OS X applications either. The LED no longer comes on when plugging into any computer.

I called Keyspan and their official response is that they do not support using their products with any virtual machine. The failures that occurred are the same for all four: the firmware was erased or corrupted. I am now waiting for a response from Keyspan to get the firmware reprogrammed by them, though I suspect that would cost more than buying new ones.

So, the bottom line is use Keyspan converters with Parallels at your own risk. If you know other supported converters, please post them here.
 
Could it possibly be that all these converters originated from the same stock and had some similar internal flaws? I'd like to confirm if anyone is experiencing similar problems before making our QA do some serious stress testing on this issue :) Anyway, I'll make sure they investigate such possibility.
 
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Keyspan says NO support for Parallels

20070830 10:30AM PST

I spoke with Keyspan support (Michael in India) regarding my inability to get a Keyspan USA-19HS to work with my MacBook Pro running Mac OS-X 10.0.4 and Parallels Build 3214 (June 21, 2007).

Michael said that Keyspan DOES NOT SUPPORT Parallels. He advised my to remove Parallels and install BootCamp. He gave me the excuse that Windows was running in emulation mode and not "real Windows" under Parallels.

The same Keyspan USB to Serial adapter works fine with my MacBook Pro in MacOS 10.0.4 using the Keyspan driver downloaded from their website (KeyspanUSBSerialv24).

Has anyone come out with a workaround? Another Vendor?
+Roger
rlf@fraumann.com
 
We have the same failure problem, but with 3 identical Philips SpeechMike Pro usb microphones, preventing us to use our professional windows running voice recognition software only after a couple of weeks without any problem... on iMac Core2Duo , Windows XP Home and XP Pro with Parallels Desktop build 3214 ! Is there any other case of such a problem ? What about the Parallels team' answer ?
 
Since my original posting, I have now experienced 100% success with my [replacement] Keyspan adapter using Windows XP with Parallels for the past month. Not a single failure.

The solution was found after searching Parallels support forums. Here is the solution.
http://forum.parallels.com/post58720-11.html

This solution does not use the Windows Keyspan drivers at all and therefore is technically not being used in a virtual machine at all. It uses a Mac OS X client to redirect the serial data to the Parallels serial port. It just works great. I wonder if this idea can be applied to other products as well...

David
 
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