[RFx-devel] Trouble with CP210x USB drivers

[Guido Vattrodt]

Hello everyone,

getting my TRF7960EVM up and running, I ran into problems with the USB 
driver. Maybe you can save a bit of time if you hear about this before you 
start playing with your EVM.

I'm running Windows XP Pro SP2 on an AMD dual core proc.
The installation of  CP210x_VCP_Win2K_XP_S2K3.exe, which is the current 
version 5.3 of the CP210x, seemed to be successfull. After a reboot I 
connected the EVM for the first time. According to the drivers 
documentation, the operating system should detect the new device and 
configure the driver "silently" (with no extra popup window). In my case a 
window appeared with an error message like "... CP210x driver could not be 
installed... hardware problem...". No reason for the faillure was given! :-(

Google found this page: 
http://www.logview.info/cms/d_silabs-210x-treiber.phtml
-- sorry, only in german --

They state there, that there are obviously many people having trouble with 
these drivers.
Beside a very detailled description how to real clean up your system from 
old CP210x drivers, they recommend to install older versions of the driver.
But an older driver version should only be installd if the most current one 
fails. In my case only version 4.28 works.

This page describes the installation of driver version 4.28 (Bantam 
e-Station)
http://www.logview.info/cms/Installation-428-Version.phtml

Driver: http://www.logview.info/Downloads/Bantam_USB.zip

- deinstall old CP210x drivers (and clean up if necessary)
- download Bantam_USB.zip and unpack in a new temp folder
- I did >NOT< start install.exe !!
- plug in the EVM
- "Found new Hardware Wizzard" appears with CP2102 USB Composite Device
-    => install from specific location... / (go to your new temp folder)
- after completion the window apeares a second time
- "Found new Hardware Wizzard" appears with CP2102 USB to UART Bridge 
Controller
-    => install from specific location... / (go to your new temp folder)
- to be save I rebooted (probably not necessary at this point)
- now everything was fine and I could start testing the supplied GUI 
software

Hope that helps.

Cheers!
Guido