Using a Targus USB to Serial adapter with OS X

Oct 13, '03 10:06:00AM

Contributed by: Anonymous

I had been looking to replace my Keyspan USB to serial adapter recently. It has taken quite a beating over the last two years and the cable was getting frayed at the ends. It has worked exceptionally well and the drivers have never caused me any problems. However, I use the port to program switches and routers NOT for syncing a Palm and the "dongle like" physical presence was not allways the easiest to work with in tight environments.

I found exactly what I wanted at Computers4Sure; it is a Targus USB Serial cable. It looks almost like a 6 foot serial cable. It has a USB connector at one end and a small Male serial connection at the other. The issue is it does not come with Mac Drivers. Poking around with USB Probe from Apple's development kit, I learned that it used the chip set from Magic Control Technology. I downloaded and installed the driver posted here.

Unfortunately there were two warnings issued during the install. One I honestly do not remember. The second had to do with permissions and security, which I chose to "fix the problem," given three choices before proceeding.

I am happy to say it has worked well over the last 48 hours under 10.2.8 on an older G3 PowerBook with no problems what so ever. So if you are in need of a good console type USB to serial adapter, I think this product or its Magic Control Technology version will do the job.

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