New Edit 10-16-2004: There's some new an exciting news in the last post by me. Enjoy!
Edit: I'll cut to the point so you guys don't have to read through all this. Use these drivers (graciuosly provided by Uwe himself) and your Hex-USB cable will emulate a COM port. Drivers even work with Vag-COM itself.
http://www.ross-tech.net/vag-com/download/Virtual-COM-Port.zip
End Edit . . .
A couple of you have asked about sharing my findings in getting a HEX-USB cable to run with software that only wants to see a VAG-ISO cable on a COM port. I know I must not be the only one with a 1.8T car, seeing all the recent posts about software, and not being able to use any of it because of having a USB-Vag cable. I wanted to share with all of you the procedure I go through to make this work.
A little history, I was browsing through some of the GIAC, REVO, and APR software posts that allow you to tweak with your ECU. I happened to get involved in a discussion about USB to Serial adapters. Someone happened to post and FTDI adaptor. Even though it was USB to Serial and not Serial to USB (which doesn't exist), that post would happen to be the clue I was looking for. I tried to manipulate the HEX-USB driver with no luck. Poking around the driver that came with the newest release of Vag-COM, I saw references to FTDI. Thinking about the Hex-USB hardware, and the hardware in general (layer 2 OSI), I knew something was translating USB signals to serial line protocol. With my research and findings, I am led to believe that inside the HEX-USB cable is some sort of USB to Serial line chip. Good thing FTDI is nice enough to provide drivers on their website free of charge to anyone who wants them
![]()
I played around for a little while and got the FTDI driver to recognize the HEX-USB hardware. Below is the easiest and fastest way I could get things to work and I wish to share with you all.
Please be forewarned that I cannot take any responsibility for anything bad that may happen as the result of this. By going further, you are doing this at your own risk! DO NOT contact me or Ross-Tech for technical support!
Also please note that Vag-COM will not recognize your HEX-USB if the driver is installed like this. You'll have to undo these changes and feed the adapter the Ross-Tech standard HEX-USB driver to work with Vag-COM. For those of us lucky few with multiple USB ports (me included) each USB port has to re-reference the drivers when plugging the device in (only on the first time). What this means in simple terms is, if you have multiple USB ports, set up one USB port solely for this purpose, and when you plug into another USB port, feed it the Vag-COM standard driver. Now you have dual capability
![]()
Please note that I am running Windows 2000. The procedure should be almost exactly the same for Windows XP, and similar for Windows 98 and ME. If you are computer savvy, you'll be able to run through this fine.
First thing, grab this zip file package (paste this shortcut in a browser window) and save to your hard drive
http://www.ftdichip.com/Files/R9032148.zip
Now, unzip these files somewhere you can remember, "Desktop" is a good place.
Now complete the following:
1. Plug in your Hex-USB cable
2. When Windows asks for a driver, choose "display a list of the known drivers for this device so that I can choose a specific driver"
3. Scroll down the hardware types tree until you see a category named "Ports (COM & LPT).
4. Choose on the left column, "Standard Port Types", and on the right column, "communications Port".
5. Choose Next, ignore the warning window, and choose yes. Continue through the wizard until the machine asks to be rebooted.
6. Do NOT reboot the machine at this point. If you accidentally do, no biggie, just takes more time.
Please note, at this point, the procedure you just went through will NOT get your HEX-USB cable working as a COM port, however, it is a necessary step in getting the FTDI driver to recognize your HEX-USB cable as a legacy COM port, who knows why. I have been unable to get the FTDI driver and the HEX-USB cable to recognize each other until I complete this procedure (or something similar, which I won't get into, keep it simple!), so it is necessary step, as wasteful as it may seem.
Now, run through the following steps:
1. Go to "my computer", right click, manage.
2. Go down the console tree until you see "Device Manager". Click there and a hardware tree will come up.
3. Notice the COM port you installed previously has a yellow exclamation point. You need to right click that COM port, hit properties.
4. Go to the "driver" tab on top, and hit "update driver". At this point you will need to hit "next", then choose "display a list of the known drivers for this device so that I can choose a specific driver", then "next".
5. Now you need to feed Windows the downloaded driver. Choose "have disk" and browse over to the directory where you expanded the driver zip file specified above. Pick any one of the three files that will show up in the directory, hit "open", then "okay". If you have done everything correctly at this point, you should see the something called "USB serial Port". Pick that, ignore the warning, and finish out the wizard.
6. The machine will probably ask for a reboot at this point. Do it.
After reboot, go to my computer, manage (just as before). Notice now that you have, under ports, a USB COM port
![]()
Under the driver properties, you can switch between virtual COM ports (COM1, COM2, COM3, etc). That should be it.
Using this method, I was able to use APR's ECU Clone utility and pull my immobilizer code out with no issues at all. IMO, if I got this far, things are working as they should and a COM port it being emulated. Furthermore, I would think that if there were any compatibility issues, that APR's ECU Clone Utility would error out.
Anyway, glad I could share with you all. Enjoy!
Modified by John A at 3:00 PM 4-21-2005
Edit: I'll cut to the point so you guys don't have to read through all this. Use these drivers (graciuosly provided by Uwe himself) and your Hex-USB cable will emulate a COM port. Drivers even work with Vag-COM itself.
http://www.ross-tech.net/vag-com/download/Virtual-COM-Port.zip
End Edit . . .
A couple of you have asked about sharing my findings in getting a HEX-USB cable to run with software that only wants to see a VAG-ISO cable on a COM port. I know I must not be the only one with a 1.8T car, seeing all the recent posts about software, and not being able to use any of it because of having a USB-Vag cable. I wanted to share with all of you the procedure I go through to make this work.
A little history, I was browsing through some of the GIAC, REVO, and APR software posts that allow you to tweak with your ECU. I happened to get involved in a discussion about USB to Serial adapters. Someone happened to post and FTDI adaptor. Even though it was USB to Serial and not Serial to USB (which doesn't exist), that post would happen to be the clue I was looking for. I tried to manipulate the HEX-USB driver with no luck. Poking around the driver that came with the newest release of Vag-COM, I saw references to FTDI. Thinking about the Hex-USB hardware, and the hardware in general (layer 2 OSI), I knew something was translating USB signals to serial line protocol. With my research and findings, I am led to believe that inside the HEX-USB cable is some sort of USB to Serial line chip. Good thing FTDI is nice enough to provide drivers on their website free of charge to anyone who wants them
Please be forewarned that I cannot take any responsibility for anything bad that may happen as the result of this. By going further, you are doing this at your own risk! DO NOT contact me or Ross-Tech for technical support!
Also please note that Vag-COM will not recognize your HEX-USB if the driver is installed like this. You'll have to undo these changes and feed the adapter the Ross-Tech standard HEX-USB driver to work with Vag-COM. For those of us lucky few with multiple USB ports (me included) each USB port has to re-reference the drivers when plugging the device in (only on the first time). What this means in simple terms is, if you have multiple USB ports, set up one USB port solely for this purpose, and when you plug into another USB port, feed it the Vag-COM standard driver. Now you have dual capability
Please note that I am running Windows 2000. The procedure should be almost exactly the same for Windows XP, and similar for Windows 98 and ME. If you are computer savvy, you'll be able to run through this fine.
First thing, grab this zip file package (paste this shortcut in a browser window) and save to your hard drive
http://www.ftdichip.com/Files/R9032148.zip
Now, unzip these files somewhere you can remember, "Desktop" is a good place.
Now complete the following:
1. Plug in your Hex-USB cable
2. When Windows asks for a driver, choose "display a list of the known drivers for this device so that I can choose a specific driver"
3. Scroll down the hardware types tree until you see a category named "Ports (COM & LPT).
4. Choose on the left column, "Standard Port Types", and on the right column, "communications Port".
5. Choose Next, ignore the warning window, and choose yes. Continue through the wizard until the machine asks to be rebooted.
6. Do NOT reboot the machine at this point. If you accidentally do, no biggie, just takes more time.
Please note, at this point, the procedure you just went through will NOT get your HEX-USB cable working as a COM port, however, it is a necessary step in getting the FTDI driver to recognize your HEX-USB cable as a legacy COM port, who knows why. I have been unable to get the FTDI driver and the HEX-USB cable to recognize each other until I complete this procedure (or something similar, which I won't get into, keep it simple!), so it is necessary step, as wasteful as it may seem.
Now, run through the following steps:
1. Go to "my computer", right click, manage.
2. Go down the console tree until you see "Device Manager". Click there and a hardware tree will come up.
3. Notice the COM port you installed previously has a yellow exclamation point. You need to right click that COM port, hit properties.
4. Go to the "driver" tab on top, and hit "update driver". At this point you will need to hit "next", then choose "display a list of the known drivers for this device so that I can choose a specific driver", then "next".
5. Now you need to feed Windows the downloaded driver. Choose "have disk" and browse over to the directory where you expanded the driver zip file specified above. Pick any one of the three files that will show up in the directory, hit "open", then "okay". If you have done everything correctly at this point, you should see the something called "USB serial Port". Pick that, ignore the warning, and finish out the wizard.
6. The machine will probably ask for a reboot at this point. Do it.
After reboot, go to my computer, manage (just as before). Notice now that you have, under ports, a USB COM port
Using this method, I was able to use APR's ECU Clone utility and pull my immobilizer code out with no issues at all. IMO, if I got this far, things are working as they should and a COM port it being emulated. Furthermore, I would think that if there were any compatibility issues, that APR's ECU Clone Utility would error out.
Anyway, glad I could share with you all. Enjoy!
Modified by John A at 3:00 PM 4-21-2005
