CHIRP

Hi Ole,

I use mostly Prolific chip based programming cables here. Because most of them have an unauthorized copy of the Prolific chip, I must also install and select the older Prolific v3.2.0.0 device driver in my Windows based physical computers and virtual machines. The reason I prefer programming cables with the Prolific type chip is because they are cheaper, easier to find for the various radios that I have and +because I can switch between them at will and the COM port number does not change+.

It is when the programming cable is plugged into a different USB port that Windows installs another copy of the device driver and then assigns a different COM port number. But once this is done, you can go into Device Manage and reassign the COM port number. I have done this on the 2 USB ports on the front of my computer. No matter which USB port I plug any of my Prolific based programming cables into, the result is always the same COM port number.

And if each of your programming cables has a different type of chip (Prolific, FTDI, SiLabs, etc), then they will be assigned different COM port number. The issue I have then is that CHIRP preselects the COM port that was used last no matter if it currently available or not. I don't know if this behavior could be changed or not.

FTDI based programming cables are usually assigned a different COM port number for each programming cable. I read that there is a registry edit that can be made so that the FTDI device driver behaves the same as the Prolific device driver in this regard, but I have never tried myself.

Jim KC9HI

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