Virtual COM Port Drivers for Ross-Tech USB Interfaces
Older Ross-Tech RS-232 Serial interfaces can be set to power up as 'dumb K-Line pass through' interfaces. This allowed those old Serial interfaces to be compatible with a wide variety of third-party applications which expect a 'K-line pass-through' serial interface. However, our USB interfaces present additional challenges. Early in their development, we found a number of technical advantages to using a 'direct' USB driver which bypasses the Windows Serial drivers entirely. Hence the USB drivers that ship with VCDS do not emulate a serial COM port and cannot be used with applications that expect to communicate via a serial port.
NOTE: The following applies to our legacy USB interfaces (HEX-USB, KII-USB and HEX-USB+CAN). It does NOT apply to our current HEX-V2 or HEX-NET interfaces. These new interfaces do not use a USB UART chip and cannot be be used for 'dumb K-line pass-through'!
In order to facilitate the use of third-party applications which expect to communicate with a serial interface, drivers that emulate a COM port are available. However, anyone thinking about using them needs to be aware of the following points:
We do not offer installation support for these drivers. They should be used only by someone who is competent/comfortable installing (and possible uninstalling) USB drivers on his PC.
We cannot offer any support for third-party software, nor any guarantee that it will work correctly with these drivers. Of course, the same would apply with a serial interface as well.
That said, here some installation notes:
These drivers are compatible with Windows 2000 and newer. They should work with W2K, XP-32, XP-64, Vista-32 and Vista-64. We do not have any VCP drivers for Windows 98!
Unzip the contents of the download into a new folder.
With an interface plugged in, find it in Device Manager, right-click it, and select Update Driver.
Depending on what drivers your system already has installed, you may have to 'force' these by telling the wizard not to search, but to let you specify what driver to install, then doing the Have Disk and Browse thing.
There's also the possibility that the Virtual COM Port won't install automatically. We've found no real pattern why it does on some systems and not on others. If it does not, find the interface in Device > Manager. The name should show '... with VCP'. Open the properties sheet, click the Advanced tab, and make sure Load VCP is checked. Once checked, disconnect and re-connect the interface.
Once the USB Serial Port is installed, you may need to change the COM Port Number (depending on how high a number the applications supports). Device Manager, Properties sheet for the USB Serial Port, Port Settings tab, Advanced button. The COM Port Number may change if you plug the interface into a different USB port, so I'd recommend always using the same USB port.
VCDS should continue to work fine with these drivers installed. Leave VCDS set to USB, not a Virtual COM Port!
Assuming you've read and understand all of the above, you can download the 'Virtual COM Port' drivers here:
Another common solution is to install either the Hitachi Microdrive Filter cfadisk.sys or the dummydisk.sys driver by Anton Bassov. To see how this works, see Agni’s YouTube video. Note that cfadisk.inf can be dynamically added using drvload.exe, but all drive file handles must be closed or you will get a ‘a reboot is required’ message. Click Browse and then locate the USB driver folder. For example, the Google USB Driver is located in androidsdk extras google usbdriver. Click Next to install the driver. To install the Android USB driver on Windows 8.1 for the first time, do the following: Connect your Android device to your computer's USB port.
A wonderful driver from Hitachi will allow us to make such a feint with our ears. Therefore, first of all, we need to download it, and then modify it. Unzip the driver archive and find the file cfadisk.inf. There’s a lot of stuff in the file, but we need one section, it’s called cfadiskdevice. Choose Update driver 21. Choose Install from a list or specific location and press Next 22. Select 'Don't search. I will choose the driver to install' and press Next 23. Press Have Disk (even though you haven't) 24. Browse to your recently edited cfadisk.inf (colocated with cfadisk.sys of course) 25. Press Open then OK. It is 32 bits only, so it will not work on x64 editions of Windows. By modifying the included INF file the filter driver can be used with any other 'removable' drive. For the device detection there are the lines in section cfadiskdevice: cfadiskdevice.
Cfadisk Usb Driver X64 Download
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Virtual COM Port Drivers