US232R USB to RS232 Serial Port Cable Driver Installation
Created on: 27 March 2014
US232R cables from FTDI Chip allow a RS-232 serial port to be added to a PC via the USB port.
RS-232 ports can be very useful for connecting a PC to embedded systems and other electronic devices such as the Raspberry PI.
These USB to serial RS232 Converters need to have drivers installed when using the converters in Windows.
This article shows how to download and install drivers for the converter cables.
Windows 8 and a US232R-100 model converter cable are used as an example in this article, but other cable models and other versions of Windows will operate in a similar way.
Using the cables in Linux will usually not require drivers to be installed. The article on connecting a Raspberry PI board to a Linux computer using a USB to serial port converter cable shows how to connect to the cable's serial port using minicom on a Linux PC.
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Downloading and Installing the Drivers
This video shows how to download and install the VCP (Virtual COM Port) drivers in Windows 8:
Can't see the video? View on YouTube →
Virtual COM Port (VCP)
VCP drivers are installed to configure the cable as a Virtual COM Port in Windows.
When configured as a VCP, the USB to serial converter cable will appear as a COM port in Device Manager or other applications that connect to the COM port, e.g. the port will appear as COM3, COM4, etc.
Terminal emulator software can connect to the converter cable by selecting the correct COM port in the software.
