PL2303 USB-SERIAL

[KKarion]

I have VMWare Fusion in my MacBook 10.5.4 running WinXP at the VM. But I cant conect and use Prolific USB-Serial.

At OS X i use it fine with PL2303 dirver, but I have a win software that I need to program a microporcessor and it use serial interface!!!

Is that PL2303 device compatible wit VMware Fusion ???

I saw it at the USB menu, but it didnt conect, already try to use 1,1 and 2.0 usb configuration.

THX

[WoodyZ]

Did you install the Windows XP Drivers and does it show up in Control Panel in Windows?

[KKarion]

I have installed the drivers that came into the CD with the USB-Serial, like i did in windows native.

[WoodyZ]

Is the USB Icon for that Device on the Status Bar showing as black or blue? If you click the USB Icon for that Device on the Status Bar does it say Connect Device_Name or does it say Disconnect Device_Name and if the former what happens if you click Connect Device_Name? Does the Device show in Device Manager in Windows?

[KKarion]

when i click at the usb icon it doesnt change his status. Conetct you Prolific USB-SERIAL... i click there and keep the same!!!!

[WoodyZ]

Again I ask...

Is the USB Icon for that Device on the Status Bar showing as black or blue? Does the Device show in Device Manager in Windows?

[Uncle_Art]

In a word: YES.

I have a $9 USB-to-Serial converter by ioConcepts that utilizes the PL2303 chipset, and it works well in both OSX (10.5.2) and a Fusion VM running XP SP2.

The one, repeatable glitch I have is that after Fusion/XP uses it, it will not be seen by OSX unless it is unplugged/replugged. However, after using it "natively" in OSX, it will be seen and useable by the Fusion VM without fiddling.

Ultimately, yes, it should work fine.

[woodmeister]

There shouldn't be a problem. I have been using it for months on a 2.4GHz Macbook

/w OSX 10.5.4 on VM's with winXP SP3 and Fedora 6 linux on developing Powerpc

and Microchip based embedded development boards.

As mentioned earlier, is the little icon blue or gray, If blue, check in the

winXP device manager and see if it shows up and what COMM port it is

assigned. Windows has a nasty habit of changing COMM port ID's

with plugin adapters if you plug into a different port. Make sure to select

the COMM port associated with the prolific device. (As a note, had an HP POS

and got all the way up to COMM7 before I figured out what was happening and

had to insert and uninstall each one until i was back down to COMM1. Thank you Bill

may i have another!)

If on the other hand, it does not show up in the device manger or has a yellow

unknown device in the list, you should probably re-install the driver.

VMware Fusion itself should not have any issues with this device.

[KKarion]

It keeps runnig in OS X, but in VM no.

Already installed the drivers that came with the adapter, and another that i download from Prolific site.

I send a picture showing what is happening.

When i click to conect, it dont change nothing.

But its good to hear thar other ppl are using it to develop with some microprocessors.... I will keep trying!!

[woodmeister]

When you do s is shown in the picture, doing the connect, does the little USB icon turn blue?

This indicates that the VM has grabbed the device. Is this happening?

If not, the adapter may be attached to some process on the mac side. You will need to

release it from that process and not use it in any mac app if you intend to use it in the VM.

As far as I know, not positive, but USB devices cannot be shared across active applications

with the exception of mass storage class.

On the other hand, if the little icon is turning blue, indicating it is attached to the VM,

and it does not show up in the device manager and doesn't prompt to install a driver,

it appears that it's probably some windows issue. In which case, disconnect the adapter

and uninstall the driver, reinstall the driver (probably reboot as well) and once the machine

is running again, then plug in the adapter. It should either auto install the device or

prompt to select a driver.

[KKarion]

When i plug the USB-serial, i got VMWare in focus... and the usb icon dont turn to blue.

and Im not using it in MAC OS as i know!

The only think I know is that it appears at /dev/tty.PL2303, when I plug it, even at vmware or at Mac, but i think this is normal!

[Mr_Mac_And_VMWa · Accepted solution]

Hello Everyone,

I have succeded with this problem. The answer is fairly simply if you

happen to use the prolfic PL2303 drivers for the MAC. The drivers I use

are freely available with the GPL licence at: . When these drivers are running the following will be displayed in Apple System Profiler under the USB subheading:

USB-Serial Controller:

Version: 3.00

Bus Power (mA): 500

Speed: Up to 12 Mb/sec

Manufacturer: Prolific Technology Inc.

Product ID: 0x2303

Vendor ID: 0x067b

In order to make this device work with VMWare Fusion 2 I had to run the following command as root from the MAC Terminal:

kextunload /System/Library/Extensions/osx-pl2303.kext/

This then produces the following output:

kextunload: unload kext /System/Library/Extensions/osx-pl2303.kext/ succeeded

When I had done this I returned to my VMWare VM and clicked on the

Virtual Machine menu then USB then Connect Prolific USB-Serial

Controller. This then worked and I could then use the USB-to-Serial

convertor under my windows VM. This particular chipset driver obviously

interferes with VMWare Fusion's control of the USB device and the

kextunload command removes the driver from the kernel's running memory.

Please note that if the MAC OS X is rebooted then the kextunload

command needs to be run again since it will be loaded upon boot.

I hope this helps.

Message was edited by: RDellimmagine to remove unnecessary formatting tag.

[KKarion]

Really thanks!!!

This last solution fits perfectaly for me!!!

[thorreim]

Thank you very much for your answer, very helpful by me,

I did load the driver under Mac OS X all the time with kextload. I did never realized that kextunload must be done!!!

[grodid]

Hi,

I currently have the same kind of issue, but the fix suggested below can't be applied.

I am running Mac OSX 10.5.7, and the Prolific USB-serial driver seems to be preinstalled

without the use of an extension file.

Indeed, when I plug the relevant USB device, instead of showing up under the Windows XP guest system,

the USB driver shows up into the USB device list (into Mac OSX system profile),

but there is no such extension file mentioning the Prolific driver under the /System/Library/Extensions tree.

I scanned carefully any Info.plist file into this tree and found no sign of the Prolific driver.

I then have a double question :

- Is this driver provided directly by the Mac OSX kernel ? In such a case, how to disable it

like it is suggested below when it is loaded thru an extension file ?

- If not, into which extension file is this driver hidden, that I can use the receipe below to disable it

into the Mac OSX machine, please ?

Thanks in advance for any hint.

I can provide any kind of additionnal info on request.

Regards.

[grodid]

Hi,

Using USB Prober, I can now confirm that the Prolofic driver is loaded in native inside of Mac OSX 10.5.7 system itself,

from the IOUSBLib bundle. So far so good. But the issue remains: MacOSX is grabing the USB-serial connection

before the guest system in VMWare fusion (WinXP).

I can't remove the relevant kext file in MACOSX because many other USB connections depend on it.

How to disable it anyway, at MacOSX level ?

Else: is there a way to force VMWare or WinXP to connect to this USB-serial port over MacOSX ?

Thanks for any help, Regards.

[grodid]

Hi,

The issue is now solved : under the guest OS (WinXP), I had to install, on top of the previous driver provided

by the cable vendor, this recent Prolific driver:

http://www.prolific.com.tw/support/files/%5CIO%20Cable%5CPL-2303%5CDrivers%20-%20Generic%5CWindows%5...

I also had to reinstall once again (some script file was missing) the cable vendor driver (no uninstall dialog occured during this 2nd driver install).

Then the Prolific COMM 4 port showed up in the Device Manager list, as expected.

Nothing required to be fixed on the MacOSX side.

Hope this helps, Regards.