mj972 I wouldn’t be so sure. Since the AAP ships with a 32gb SD card, simply adding the driver isn’t an option, as it will increase the production cost due to the need to ship the product with a 64gb card.
Jon,
I am sure the driver will be in a future release since ZWO now knows the lack of a Prolific driver is a big problem; more so now because of the global chip shortage is causing manufacturers to use whatever chip set they can get their hands on. I have just sent ZWO a direct email pointing to your post.
The driver size should not be a big problem (the 32 GB SD card has over 20 GB left over for data today, and most people are using USB drives for image data nowadays). The actual memory usage can always be done as a conditional load (I don't know if they are already doing that for other drivers).
FTDI is the premier chipset when it comes to a USB Virtual COM port ("USB UART"). The Prolific is probably cheaper.
The FTDI was bootlegged back about 15 years ago (I am an old man and don't have such good memory anymore about exact timing) by a chip foundry in China. The problem is that the bootleg was not a perfect copy and caused many problems, plus a lack of license payment. (The same problem with the leaky tantalum capacitor and exploding Lithium battery problems in the past 10 to 20 years too -- they were all bootlegs that did not copy the crucial ingredients.) FTDI issued a firmware update that bricked all the bootlegged devices. They later backed down after that inconvenienced too many innocent customers. But it showed back then how widespread the intellectual property theft was. You can probably still find articles about the FTDI problem in Google archives.
Anyway, glad you guys found the way to become sane again!
All the best,
Chen
