Received the FTDI board today and it worked like a charm. Loaded a few examples without an issue. Now on to the hard stuff! Just for giggles I tried the CH340 again for comparison. It connects but no matter what the baud is set to, it spits out garbage. No wonder it does not know it is connected. I ...

The CH340 boards are showing as com3. The ones I have do not have a DTR signal out. I am sure I could hack the board but will do so at another time. I will use the FTDI board for now and keep it simple.

After doing some more reading on the site and the forums it seems that the BASIC software looks for the FTDI driver. I have an USB to 9 PIN RS232 converter that is not recognized either. So as not to waste any more time, I did purchase a programming dongle from the site. Yes it more expensive but it...

I purchased a few of the PROstart boards and I am trying to communicate with them. I have CH340 boards that I use with Arduinos but I am not having any luck with the PROstart. Due to the issues with the genuine FTDI chips, I now only use the CH340. Will I have to find a FTDI programming dongle? The ...