Sorry, I know there are other forum posts on this subject, but none seemed to help.
I have a relatively new PC with Windows 11 Pro. I successfully installed Java and the Java Development Kit, Alchitry Labs, Vavado, wrote and successfully compiled several tutorial projects, successfully generated binary files.
But now I find Alchitry Labs, both old and new versions, both the labs and the loaders, don’t recognize my board. The board is plugged in and powered on, doing its LED wave, and on Windows Device Manager, I can see an unidentified something connecting to a port when I plug it in.
Any specific advise on what to try next would be appreciated. Thanks!
P.S. To further complicate the issue - I just tried installing Alchitry Labs on an older PC running windows 10 and still got the same result: board not recognized!
I had the same issue until I switched to a real USB-C to USB-C cable instead of a USB-C to USB-A adapter. Might be worth trying a different cable if you are using something similar.
Windows is supposed to download the FTDI drivers from Windows Update if it is allowed to do so (default behavior).
When the drivers are properly installed, you should see in the Device manager :
Under USB bus controller :
At least one Composite USB device (which is the root of the FTDI chip)
USB Serial Converter A (the JTAG port)
USB Serial Converter B (the serial port)
Under COM and LPT ports :
At least one serial port
If you don’t see all of these, then the FTDI driver is not properly installed.
You may try to install it manually from this link : FTDI driver for AU and CU
I appear to already have the FTDI drivers. I got the download from your link and use it to install the drivers again, but it didn’t seem to do anything. I tried deleting the drivers. Your installer didn’t reinstall them I don’t thing. When I plugged in the Au, Windows 11 reinstalled them, but they look just like they did to start with.
I am going to send several images showing what is installed. ( I can only submit one at a time.) Perhaps you can tell me from these images what is wrong with my ports. Alchitry Labs still does not recognize my board. Thanks!!
Thank you very much for your continuing efforts to help resolve this.
I tried running Labs as admin - that didn’t help.
I attempted to run your FTDIList program. I am running other .NET apps, so not a problem. I turned off Norton temporarily, as it tried to block it. It still just opens up and immediately shuts down. I think Windows itself is blocking it, but don’t know how to fix that.
Any other suggestions on how to proceed. Thanks again.
It looks likes there is something wrong with the configuration of your 2232H.
Instead of “Dual RS232-HS A” and B, mine says “Alchitry Au A” and B.
Labs and Loader both uses this string to identify the board, as you can see in the sources :
So that means we need to reconfigure the 2232H chip on your AU.
This is not supposed to happen, I don’t know how your AU ended up with such a partial configuration.
The good part is that FTDI offers everything we need (tools and APIs) that allow us to reconfigure it freely, which is very nice because these ability are usally reserverd to factories.
I did some test with my own AU and it appears that this part should follow the “Description” field, but it looks like this sync is somewhere on driver level.
So the chip configuration looks good, but the driver does not reflect it correctly.
Maybe you can try to fully remove the driver and let windows reinstall it?
I already deleted the driver once, and Windows did reinstall it. So where do we go from here?
Sounds like it might be easier to send me a “special” version of Labs that recognizes my board, rather than trying to modify my board or computer or whatever . . .
I just got a new system a few weeks ago with Windows 11 Pro preinstalled. Up until the past month, all my experience was with Windows 10. So I have no more experience with 11 than you do. But last weekend, I did load Labs onto my old Windows 10 computer, and got the same error. So from here it looks like its the Au board itself.
So it could be an issue with the FTDI after all, so the next step would be to use the official tool to check it, but it sounds wierd because my app reports from 2 sources :
The line with the ID number followed by the name comes from the driver
The followinf lines are extracted from the chip’s memory
The wierd thing is that the driver is supposed to use the Description field from the chip’s memory. I don’t understand why it does not…
This is very strange given that it is listing the manufacture and description correctly.
I originally thought that maybe the EEPROM wasn’t working but that doesn’t appear so.
I just fired up a Windows 11 VM and my Au shows up with the description as the name (with A/B suffix). I double checked the driver version is the same as you’re using and everything else looks the same.
Where did you buy your board? I can reach out to SparkFun and get a replacement setup for you. Normally, I’d tell you just to contact them but I want to see if they don’t mind you sending me the board to examine instead. Email me your order info justin@alchitry.com if you want me to get this started.
