On Jan 29, 2008, at 5:12 PM, John Heaton wrote:
since then I've used several keyspan adapters and all were picked up correctly by MacOSX.
http://www.keyspan.com/products/homepage.2.productList.Serial.spml
In the past I've used IOGear's stuff also.
I did some minimal background checking, and it would appear that (of course) the chipset used by the manufacturer is the key (no pun intended) to whether or not most USB-to-serial devices work under Unix and Unix-like OS's like Linux and OS X. (Technically I'm running OX 10.5, so does that make it OS X.V? Heh.)
I found that almost anything made by FTDI works on anything I plug them into, mainly because they publish standards for talking to their hardware (like all good hardware manufacturers do) whereas many of the cheap knock-offs haven't had drivers written for them.
So -- if manufacturers publish that they're using FTDI chipsets (few do this either), those are usually a "safe" bet. That and always buying hardware from reputable retailers who will take back things that won't work without robbing you (so called "re-stocking" fees).
-- Nate Duehr, WY0X nate@natetech.com