Warning about chinese Melzi Boards (with solutions)

A little or BIG warning to all owners of those chinese Prusa i3 clones with MELZI boards:

ALL of the shipped melzi boards from china are using a FAKE FTDI chip (this is the chip for the serial to USB communication).

There was a problem (I think about 1-2 years) where windows did update automaticially the drivers with a "special" one from FTDI. Result: The "fake" FTDI were bricked from software side (there was an time intensive option the reanimate them)

But NOW: FTDI and windows update did it again! Not the hard way, but if your printer stops from working and you cannot connect to the printer, use any serial terminal, take the right port and look at the output: It will scrolls continously "Fake FTDI chip detected!"

Solution #1: Revert the FTDI driver manually. Google for it. And keep an eye of the windows updater in future.

Solution #2: Buy a cheap HC-06 bluetooth dongle (there are many manuals how to implement it on melzi board) and use only bluetooth for serial communication

Solution #3: Buy a RAMPS 1.4 and a mega2560 (So did I)

Final Solution: Never buy a FTDI product anymore, no even an original one.(but this should be another discussion)

Quote
madias
A little or BIG warning to all owners of those chinese Prusa i3 clones with MELZI boards:

ALL of the shipped melzi boards from china are using a FAKE FTDI chip (this is the chip for the serial to USB communication).

There was a problem (I think about 1-2 years) where windows did update automaticially the drivers with a "special" one from FTDI. Result: The "fake" FTDI were bricked from software side (there was an time intensive option the reanimate them)

But NOW: FTDI and windows update did it again! Not the hard way, but if your printer stops from working and you cannot connect to the printer, use any serial terminal, take the right port and look at the output: It will scrolls continously "Fake FTDI chip detected!"

Solution #1: Revert the FTDI driver manually. Google for it. And keep an eye of the windows updater in future.

Solution #2: Buy a cheap HC-06 bluetooth dongle (there are many manuals how to implement it on melzi board) and use only bluetooth for serial communication

Solution #3: Buy a RAMPS 1.4 and a mega2560 (So did I)

Final Solution: Never buy a FTDI product anymore, no even an original one.(but this should be another discussion)

A known issue with fake Serial to USB chip.

DON'T BUY CHEAP CRAP WHICH ARE FAKE and if you do, ASSUME but DON'T PUT THE BLAME ON THE ORIGINAL VENDOR, here FTDI ! Why should a legit company provide drivers for thieves !

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/15/2016 03:10PM by MKSA.

Why does windows make you use a proprietary driver for something that is supposed to be an open standard (RS232 over US? The linux driver implements the standard and works for all USB serial chips.

@MKSA:
1. The effects of the FTDI driver policy is well discussed at hackaday. For short: It's one thing that a company should defend their property, but it's another to let the unknowing customers bleed for it. I hear you cry "UNKNOWING?". So, as one example(!) read this [communities.intel.com] and yes, I know the whole FTDI story, but as I bought the printer, I didn't noticed that there is a FTDI on it (I guessed CH340 or something).
2. Yes I blame FTDI how they "solve" the problem. It would be easy to put a popup message like "We are sorry, a counterfeit FTDI chip was detected, please get in touch with the seller of the product" into the driver. But only putting a "hidden" message into the serial monitor, or brick the fake device (without message what happend) like in the past - this is a effrontery on the end customer in my eyes and far beyond saving their property.
3. You have serious problems with your caps lock key.

@hoxsiew: I dont why microsoft didn't use the standard in the past, I'm under OSX and I never installed any USB/Serial driver (as far as I know) like on linux. My warning was only to help people here in the forum who bought their first printer and get into troubles, because of Point #2 above.

Current latest windows FTDI drivers do not brick the clones, they have stopped doing that after the public backlash
BUT they do still detect them and now they insert "NON GENUINE DEVICE FOUND" into the serial data..

This of course breaks anything its connected to.... but doesn’t brick the unit (as such)

When I change my operation system from xp to win10 i face this problem. Older drivers doesn't work.
Can I simply change ftdi chip to some pin-to-pin replacment, ie PL2303HX?
I saw on aliexpress that chinese vendors mod melzi to work with ch340 instead of ft232rl but I cant find any schematic with that modyfication.
Bluetooth connection never work with my setup so it isn't option for me.