usb ports

Despite the first reviewers comments, the Keyspan 19HS works just fine with linux. The driver for the 19HS was included in the kernel source a while ago. Standard off-the-shelf kernels (2.4.24 and 2.6.5) work without any patches. In addition to regular usb support, my kernels also load the keyspan and usb-serial modules.

After executing "mknod /dev/ttyUSB0 c 188 0", I am happily communicating with Palms and GPSs using the new /dev/ttyUSB0 device.

I got the USA-19HS thinking it would be good to support a company that releases it's products with linux drivers. Well, what a disappointment this was, even though there is a picture of Tux on the box along with the Windows and Mac icons this model is not supported in Linux. I emailed Keyspan support and got an auto-repsonder that said they'll get back to me within 72 hours. It's been 4 days and still no response from them. Luckily this thing worked pretty well in OS X so I sold it to a friend of mine and bought myself another USB serial adapter, a keyspan USA-19, which is an older model with good Linux support. Although I replaced this purchase with another one of Keyspan's products I wouldn't support this company in the future and won't recommend them to anyone else.

I usually don't write-up reviews, but I am writing this to let those Mac OSX users (inc Panther which is what I am running) know that this adapter does work. I bought this for my Garmin etrex Legend GPS. I use it with my iBook and my Power Mac G4. It was a flawless installation. (1) I installed the Mac OS X drivers (2) told virtual PC to emulate COM 1 using the OS X driver, and (3) Download GPS map data to my GPS. It's that easy! Keyspan has good instructions to set up your serial devices.