If you're living in Bangladesh or any other "third-world" country like me, chances are you'll stumble upon electronic components so ridiculously cheap that they're practically screaming "fake!" Just a few days ago, I needed a USB to TTL serial converter for a project. I grabbed the absolute cheapest one in the market. The chip didn't even have a single marking on it! I was a little skeptical at first, but hey, I needed to get the job done, so I just went ahead and bought it.
In case you're wondering what on earth a USB to TTL converter is, it's basically a communication bridge! It works its magic between a USB's serial bus and a UART (Universal Asynchronous Receiver-Transmitter) serial. UART is a super popular communication protocol that hobbyists and engineers use all the time to get microcontrollers and hardware devices talking to each other.
So, I excitedly plugged the converter into my computer, only for my PC to hit me with: "PL2303HXA Phased Out Since 2012."
Bro, it's just a simple USB to TTL converter—why so much drama?!
After doing a little digging, I found out that the PL2303HXA used to be a super famous and dirt-cheap chipset. But way back in 2012, Prolific (the company that makes it, hence the "PL" in the name) retired the PL2303HXA and moved on to newer models.
But here's the kicker: I didn't buy an old TTL converter. This thing was brand spanking new, just built with a cloned chipset! Officially, there's zero way to use this TTL converter with modern computers and drivers. But guess what? I found a sneaky little workaround to get this baby running on newer Windows operating systems using a rollback driver! I managed to track down some ancient drivers (like, from 2011) that actually make this hardware work perfectly on my rig (Windows 10 and 11).
But here's the kicker: I didn't buy an old TTL converter. This thing was brand spanking new, just built with a cloned chipset! Officially, there's zero way to use this TTL converter with modern computers and drivers. But guess what? I found a sneaky little workaround to get this baby running on newer Windows operating systems using a rollback driver! I managed to track down some ancient drivers (like, from 2011) that actually make this hardware work perfectly on my rig (Windows 10 and 11).
How to Save Your USB TTL Converter (And Your Sanity!)
I stumbled upon a lifesaver of a solution in a YouTube video by a user named Yellow Purple. Here's the video link: PL2303HXA Phased out since 2012. Please contact your supplier (SOLVED)In the video, he shows exactly how to roll back the driver and fire up the USB to TTL converter on his PC. At first, looking at my Windows Device Manager, I kept seeing the dreaded message: "PL2303HXA Phased Out Since 2012, Please Contact Your Supplier." Like, bro, I don't even know who my supplier is!
Inside this zip file, you'll find an installer named DriverInstaller v1.0.2.5 - Prolific PL2303 driver v3.3.3.114, which might also just show up as Driverinstaller_1025.
Go ahead and install this driver using the EXE file. This will inject the good old vintage driver right into your system.
Now, let's get into the technical stuff!
After installing the driver package, you'll be able to spot the installed drivers for this specific device right in your Device Manager. You should see 2 drivers installed. Now, you might be looking at my screenshot and wondering, "Wait, why do you have 3 drivers?" Well, that's just because I accidentally installed the driver pack twice in two different locations, so I have multiple instances floating around. It makes absolutely no difference, so don't sweat it!
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| List of Installed Drivers |
Now we just need to follow a few super simple steps to activate the driver.
- Right-click on the device and hit Properties
- Head over to the Driver tab
- Click on that Update Driver button
- In the Update Driver box, select "Browse my computer for drivers"
- Next, you want to choose "Let me pick from a list of available drivers on my computer"
- From the list that pops up, select the vintage 2009 driver
- Finally, hit Next to kick off the installation. Once it's done, your Device Manager window will do a quick refresh, and boom—you'll see your TTL converter is finally alive and kicking!
See? Not that hard! Though honestly, I'd still highly recommend just buying a newer model USB to TTL converter to save yourself the headache. But for now, let's put this baby to the test!
Looks like it's working flawlessly! Now, let's really test this TTL converter by looping some characters through the data lines. To pull off this test, just short the TX and RX lines using a jumper wire. With this neat little setup, whatever the TTL converter transmits, it will instantly receive back.
And here it is, working perfectly inside the Arduino IDE! Apologies for my camera's low framerate and slow shutter speed—it couldn't quite capture the rapid flashing of the blue LED while the data was zooming through.
At the end of the day, bro, if you value your peace of mind, just buy authentic, newer-model hardware. And definitely avoid the cheap fakes! That's all for today. Catch you later!
