[E3-hacking] Cheap PL2303 cable @ Ebuyer

[David Given]

On Wednesday 13 July 2005 14:07, Matt Evans wrote:
[...]
> :-)  It says the inputs are always 5V-tolerant.  So, it will probably
> Just Work - cross the voltage-too-low bridge if you come to it.
> (Modify the cable to run I/O at 5V rather than 3.3V if necessary.)

Actually, it never occurred to me that it might be in danger --- the idea of a 
USB slave chipset that can't cope with 5V inputs is a bit bizarre, given that 
USB is all 5V!

(In fact, I'm a little bemused about why the PL2303 is powered off 3.3V.)

Looking closely at the PCB it actually looks like quite a nice little thing; 
there are pads for all the output signals, so if you want DTR or RTS they're 
available, and there's a whole bunch of diagnostic pads of unknown purpose. 
There's also a 8-pin IC blank and a six-pin jumper blank. I suspect this is 
for the PL2303's configuration EEPROM. There's definite hacking possibilities 
here.

-- 
+- David Given --McQ-+ "There are two major products that come out of
|  dg at cowlark.com    | Berkeley: LSD and Unix. We don't believe this to be
| (dg at tao-group.com) | a coincidence." --- Jeremy S. Anderson
+- www.cowlark.com --+ 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://www.earth.li/pipermail/e3-hacking/attachments/20050713/ff621c65/attachment.pgp