usb to serial adapter on Dell inspiron 1150

Hi Many thanks for your prompt reply. There is no documentation with or in the add regarding the adapter and trying to talk to the Chinese suppliers is hopeless.I`ve already tried the Google route and tried a couple of drivers from known brands.

I was hoping that someone out there has one of these adapters and has a copy of the disk they could email me.There are lots of adverts on ebay selling the same ,or appear to be the same, device with mini disc and the number of sales they record are in the thousands!

However, I`ve just had a close look at the device itself and it has the number 340 imprinted into the blue translucent shell of the D plug.Now, I mention this because on my trawl of the mumerous adverts of similar looking adapters I found one Chinese supplier who lists the "driver" chip used as CH340. so i`m just wondering if these two link together?

Does this number mean anything to you? ,I think I`ll try and google it just to see.

@johnmatthews  You could try having Windows Update search for an applicable driver.  Otherwise, there isn't really a lot to go in in this post that would help anyone else help you.  Based on the information you provided about the only other suggestion would be to Google "USB to serial drivers" and see if any of the top hits have drivers that Device Manager will accept for that device.  The top hit when I just did that is FTDI, and I've used a few different USB to Serial adapters that relied on FTDI chipsets.  Other than that, I don't think refining the Google search to say "Cheap Chinese USB to serial drivers" is likely to return more meaningful results.  So if you can't provide any more detail about the adapter itself, it would be hard for anyone here to offer any more precise suggestions.

@johnmatthews  Unfortunately the "340" number doesn't mean anything to me personally, but it might be helpful to someone else who may see this thread.  I'm kind of surprised that these adapters at this point don't use a chipset that's natively supported by modern Windows versions or at least include a piece of paper with a shortened URL link you can enter to download the necessary drivers.  Providing them on a disc seems problematic given that many systems don't even have optical drives anymore.  In any case, good luck!

Hi many thanks for your reply.After my last reply last night I did google it and eventually ended up on the Chinese manufacturers web site WCH and there they had up to date drivers for the CH340 IC from Win 98 onwards.As there are no longer any suitable browsers available for XP on the 1150 I had to down load it on my Win 10desk top and extract all the files, but despite me pointing device manager to the files it still refused to recognise them.However, I restarted my Win 10 desk top and there in device manager was the adapter listed under "usb to serial adapter CH340 com port 3". and showing in properties that it was working OK.Under drivers it had something about Microsoft compatibility and then the same text as under com port.So, I`m not sure what happened,did Win 10 find it on the web or did it find it in down loads?

The other thing is that WCH advise not connecting the adapter until the drivers are intsalled. which I thought was a bit odd?

Anyway, as I can`t download the drivers directly to my 1150 I`ll have to transfer the drivers to a disc and go from there.The serial device I need to drive is a Motorla RIB box which is interposed between the computer and the radio to be programmed so I can`t yet tell if this will work as I have no other serial devices other than an old serial mouse.

I need to use the 1150 as many of these Motorla legacy programmes are designed for use in DOS,Win 98 and at a push XP .Also, some came as floppy discs and they won`t run on modern computers or using DOSbox or similar.The other problem I may have is pointing the programme to where the files exist on the 1150 as the programmes refer back to drive A for instructions whilst running,which of course the 1150 doesn`t have.

I`m just thinking out aloud here ,I`ll see what happens,it`s all good fun! Thanks again

https://kk6jyt.com/motorola-radius-gm300-programming/