Overview of USB serial
======================

There are lots of different features each brand.  Finding out those features are difficult so hopefully this will bring the information together in a single spot.

## Major Players

1. FTDI (uftdi)
2. Prolific (uplcom)

## Minor Players

1. WinChipHead (CH340) (uchcom)
2. Silicon Laboratories (uslcom)

There are many additional third tier players as well.

Details
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# FTDI

They are probably most common.

## Pros

Wide availability.

## Cons

They have played dirt w/ their offical drivers to combat conterfit devices from bricking devices, to sending junk on the serial port when detecting couterfit devices.

# Prolific

## Pros

## Cons

Special hardware needed to program serial number.  And Windows only software.

# Silicon Laboratories

## Pros

Can program serial number: https://github.com/emaste/cp210x-cfg
## Cons