Serial ports

A few months have gone by now and there is a few Insider Edition updates since my last unsuccessful attempt in this space. I will try again and report back on my progress. I need USBc to RS232 Serial working and am hoping I can gets this cracked once and for all.

 

Again, everyone, I'm using an M1 Pro MacBook Pro with Windows 11 ARM with success using CP2102 and CH340G because both manufacturers have already released Windows 11 ARM official drivers. Feel free to visit their webpages and try their downloads

 

Hello, could you explain better, I use old software omron CX-Programer and telemechanique for windows, this software can be installed on win 11, which is the only virtual machine that I can mount on the new mac M1Max, the serial cables recognize them the mac, what happens is that in windows it does not recognize it as PORTS com & (LPT) and I think that it is the parallels that makes them not found, it appears as another device and I have not been able to change the driver.
I appreciate help

 

AyrtonE, could you please name or link some of those USB to Serial cables using CP2102 or CH340G chips? When I google it all I find are modules I'd have to solder into a cable myself. Thanks.

 

More info please mate? Product info please.

 

Hey everyone, sorry for late reply, I shared a detailed post a couple of weeks ago but it seems it didn't get approved by admin.
Note: I was able to use all these USB to serial chips on Mac OS without needing to install additional drivers.
I need to use them under Windows 11 Arm for specific Windows-only software.
Here it is:

• CH340G: used in Chinese boards like LOLIN ESP32/ESP8266 and other generic Chinese Arduino boards.
  • http://www.wch.cn/download/ch341ser_exe.html
    
  • The page is in Chinese from the original manufacturer, but its easy to find the download button.
• CP210x USB to UART Bridge VCP Drivers
  
  • They provide Windows Universal driver that includes the arm64 support.
  • Homepage: https://www.silabs.com/developers/usb-to-uart-bridge-vcp-drivers
  • Direct download link: CP210x Universal Windows Driver
• FTDI still doesn't have Windows 11 ARM support. Only for Mac OS.

 

I spent some time with this a week ago, and haven't had a lot of success. Using FTDI USB-Serial adapters connected to my Mac and mapped to emulated serial ports on the guest machine, I have mixed results with Windows for ARM and Debian for ARM. I've opened a ticket with Parallels support, but they seem only vaguely interested in helping me solve the problem. They did ask for a followup, asked me to reinstall Parallels tools, etc, but the symptoms I have truly indicate a problem with Parallels itself.

I used screen on macOS and Debian and connected two adapters together. These were my results:

Code:

|                   | macOS screen  | Debian screen | Win 11 ARM PuTTY |
| ----------------- | ------------- | ------------- | ---------------- |
| macOS `screen`    |       Y       |               |                  |
| Debian `screen`   |       N       |       1       |                  |
| Win 11 ARM PuTTY  |       N       |       2       |        Y         |

*Note 1:* Adding two serial ports to the guest Debian, and using two `screen`
instances to communicate with each, one screen shows nothing, the other shows
local echo and characters typed into the first.

*Note 2:* PuTTY seems to reliably show characters sent to it. Debian `screen`,
however, does not.

Connecting to emulated port #1 (`/dev/ttyAMA0`), Debian never shows characters
sent to it. Connecting to emulated port #2 (`/dev/ttyAMA1`), using the *same*
host port, show characters if they are typed slowly enough (much slower than
19200 baud). This behavior exhibits regardless of whether or not the remote end
is Debian `screen` or Windows PuTTY.

 

I should note that for a while, I was able to use FTDI's beta ARM drivers in Windows to connect the adapter directly to the guest OS. But after a Toolbox update, that stopped working, and no amount of reinstalling helped. The process was difficult, as their driver is not yet signed, and they don't want to support VMs.

Emulating a serial port is a much better solution, but it's not working well in Parallels M1.

 

The FTDI beta drivers are still working for me. I'm running the latest versions of Windows 11 arm64 retail, Parallels, Parallels Tools and Parallels Toolbox (not sure that Toolbox would have anything to do with handling serial ports -- it runs under MacOS.)

 

Hi all, is anyone able to point me to an off-the-shelf USB to Serial adaptor that uses the CH340G or CP210x chips that are listed above as having ARM drivers available? I currently have a prolific USB to Serial adaptor, but like most others on this thread, I am finding that I can't get it to work in a VM on a new M1 Mac.

If it's just a matter of purchasing a new piece of hardware, I'm sorted, I just can't find any devices that explicitly call out that they're using those chips.

 

Hi all, the FTDI WINDOWS 11 ARM drivers are available at FTDI WEB SITE. I have a USB-C to RS232 converter with FTDI CHIP (bought at Amazon) working on mi WINDOW 11 ARM PARALLELS VM. My laptop is a MACBOOK PRO 2021 (M1 PRO processor).

 

Thanks @WilmarO - is it possible to post a link to the model you purchased? I like the idea of USB-C to serial (instead of going USB-C > USB-A > RS232), and if you've got it working on your 2021 M1 Pro then I should be able to make it work on mine!

 

OIKWAN brand.

 

Hi all
As above tried and tried no joy for me with getting either to work, agree probably a Parallels issue, hope it get sorted.

 

Good news. FTDI has released a signed version of the Windows 11 arm64 drivers. You can find it on the VCP drivers page on the FTDI website:

https://ftdichip.com/drivers/vcp-drivers/

Scroll down to the first line of the table, "Windows (desktop)". Under the ARM column you'll see a link named 2.12.36.4A****. That's the one you want. The footnote says: "****Windows 10 and Windows 11 only for ARM64 based Windows PCs. Also works on Mac M1 running Parallels VM with Windows."

I'm wondering if they put that last part in there when I reported that the beta works under Parallels on my MacBook M1 Max.

I installed and tested the new driver and, sure enough, I don't have to disable the signed driver check when I reboot Windows. That annoyance is gone.

The bad news is that the Port Configuration tab still doesn't appear in each COM port's Properties dialog, so you can't change the port name or default port settings. I've put a query in to FTDI asking if there's a procedure to get the tab appear or if they haven't implemented that function yet. In the meantime, see my earlier post on how to get around this by patching the registry using the 2016 document provided by FTDI.

I have a feeling that the driver may not be marking the COM ports as legacy devices in the registry. I think the Port Configuration tab only appears for legacy devices. I'll poke around in the registry to see if I can find the flag and whether it enables the tab.

 

Hi there
Thank you, but i can't get it to work for me, obviously i'm doing something wrong. i have prolific chip in the USB to serial cable, i can see it identified in the device manager, but it is marked unplugged or question mark, any more help,ideas greatfully received, Oh i also have CP2102 USB TO UART noi luck there either.... my Prolific one is FT232R USB UART.

 

Sorry, my comments only apply to USB to serial devices based on FTDI chips. You need different drivers to support the Prolific chip. When looking around for FTDI drivers, I thought I saw a reference to a beta driver for Prolific, so maybe there is one.

 

I have a device on the FT232 chip. When installing the driver 2.12.36.4a on Windows 11 the Virtual Machine Parallels Desktop for Macbook M1, there is no additional port settings tab. Can this be fixed somehow?

 

Yes, I'm afraid that's true. I've been in contact with FDTI support about it, and they gave me yet another workaround that's less drastic than the registry patches described in my December 1, 2021 post to this thread, but still not ideal.

Go into Device Manager and select Devices and Printers. You should see your device or the USB Serial Adapter for it. Right-click and select Properties. You'll get a dialog box with two tabs. Select Hardware and you should see your COM port in the list. Right click on that and select Properties. That should bring up the familiar Properties dialog that has the Port Settings tab.

*However*, while this works great for changing the top-level items like baud rate, parity, stop bits, etc., you have to use the Advanced tab to change the COM port name or advances settings like buffer sizes, etc. But when you click on Advanced, you get an error dialog saying you don't have permission to access.

Poking around in the registry, I found that this is caused by a registry key for the COM port not having an owner, hence no one has permission to use the Advanced tab. Adding an owner fixes this. Here's how I did it: I went into the registry and searched for the COM port name. I had to go past several single-key items with the COM port name until I found one that had two keys, one of which was Properties. I right-clicked on that and selected Permissions. There I saw that there was no owner for the key. Using the Advanced tab, I changed the owner to Administrators and made sure Administrators have Full Control.

That did the trick. I was able to click on the Advanced tab for the COM port and change the COM port name and other parameters.

I told FTDI that while this workaround is effective, as is the other one I described earlier for changing COM port names, it shouldn't require patching the registry. Seems to me that the least they can do is make sure that Properties key is owned by Administrators, and really they should fix the absence of the Port Settings tab in Device Manager. At first they pushed back, saying people really shouldn't need to change COM port settings, but I quickly disabused them of that notion, based on my decades of coding communications software and working with serial ports. The support tech agreed with my arguments and said he would take up the issue with the Development team. Keep your fingers crossed. They did eventually respond to my request for signed drivers.

 

Hi there,

Could you share your process for installation? When I try to manually install the driver it just keeps giving me "Windows was unable to install". I verified that my VID and PID match in the .inf file as mentioned in this document on page 25. Any direction or help would be greatly appreciated! Setup is an M1 Pro Macbook Pro running Windows 11 in Parallels.