[daphreak]

While I don't like that FTDI is pushing their brick-making drivers out over automatic updates, I think the folks calling for everyone to ditch their chips are a little over the top.

Personally, I would love to have a reliable way to detect counterfeit chips. For FTDI I do! Now it is trivial to lot test my chips: Just put one (or a few depending on your level of quality) on a test jig and use the latest driver with it.

Contrast that with one of these other generic pieces of silicon. Is the argument that since the drivers are generic it doesn't matter if counterfeits make it into your products? Of course it still matters! Every single datasheet value that you used in your design is now out the window.

FTDI should absolutely be more forthcoming with their counterfeit detection process. It is going to be a tough call next time I need a USB-Serial chip. FTDI has a great product and documentation, but a future update might break my device if it used counterfeit components that were so far undetected.

[raverbashing]

Sure, if you are willing to throw your money away because some driver thinks you have a "fake chip" so be it.

Oh and it's not reliable because you might get one that's accepted by the current driver but gets bricked in the future

[tw04]

The correct thing to do would be to throw the user a warning... not cause irrevocable harm. It's not going to stop the counterfeiters, it's just going to hurt legitimate customers.

This would be akin to the government poisoning cocaine shipments with anthrax to try to stop the drugs from flowing in. You won't stop anything, you'll only hurt "innocent" people.

[tremon]

No, not cocaine. That implies the end users are actually doing something socially undesirable.

A better analogy would be the government enforcing an import ban by adding sugar to the petrol imported from specific countries.