18 Aug
2012
18 Aug
'12
5:15 p.m.
On 08/18/2012 07:25 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote:
...and, in their defense (and I'm as annoyed about the whole China
issue as anyone else), not everything from the Chinese is junk.
I received a shipment of RF adapters (SMA-N) from there today. I'm
generally pretty anal and elitist about test equipment, right on down to
(and especially) cables and adapters, but I thought I'd take a chance
and just see how bad they are. I swept them on an RF network analyzer
and they're actually quite good.
Also today, one of my bench power supplies, the one proudly
proclaiming "MADE IN USA!!! YEE-HAW!!" (well, it doesn't actually say
"yee haw") went up in smoke, while operating well within its specifications.
Not everything made in China is automatically bad, and not everything
made in the USA is automatically good!
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
Don't use
eBay to buy USB<->UART adaptors. If you want to make sure
you get one with an FTDI chip, Google for one. There are lots of dual
and quad adaptors out there as well, because (with some
oversimplification) the FT2232 and 4232 are dual and quad UART
versions of the FT232. You may pay a bit of a price premium, but
you'll probably only need to buy one.
Now that depends. For example, item 120966152129 is a Sabrent FTDI
adapter offered directly from Egghead for $12.99+$1.99 shipping. Not
a bad deal, since Egghead's sale price through their web store is
$19. (It gets 5-star ratings).
Not everything on eBay is from Chinese sellers offering junk.