Mac screen USB serial CP210x setup guide (Simple steps to get connected)

Hey everyone, so today I want to talk about my little adventure with getting a serial connection working on my Mac. You know, I needed to connect some device using a serial port, and I thought, “Oh, this should be easy, right?” Well, not quite. Turns out, my Mac doesn’t come with the right drivers, which I guess makes sense these days.

The device I was trying to use was based on this chip called CP210x, it’s a USB-to-serial thingy. Basically, it lets you connect old-school serial devices through a USB port. Cool stuff, but kind of a headache to set up, at least for me.

First thing I did was some good ol’ Googling. I found out that I needed to download and install something called “CP210x USB to UART Bridge VCP Drivers” which Silicon Labs, the company that makes the chip, provides for Mac OS X.

• So, I went ahead and found the driver download page.
• Downloaded the driver package, it was a .zip file.
• Unzipped it, pretty standard stuff so far.

Now, here’s where it got a bit tricky. The instructions I found online were all over the place. Some said to just run the installer, others said to install it twice. What? Anyway, I decided to just go for it and ran the installer. But nothing happened. I mean, it said it was installed, but when I checked in System Information under USB, my device wasn’t showing up. Still not working!

After some more digging, I stumbled upon a forum post, maybe Reddit. Someone there mentioned that there’s an older version of the driver, like a “legacy” version, in the same download package. I dug into the files again and sure enough, there it was.

So, I tried installing that older driver, crossed my fingers, and…bam! It worked! I could finally see the device listed, something like “/dev/*”. This was a big win, I was so relieved.

Lessons Learned

Here’s what I learned from this whole ordeal:

• Sometimes, the newest driver isn’t the best one, especially with older hardware.
• Online instructions can be confusing, so you gotta be patient and try different things.
• And most importantly, don’t give up! Even if it seems like nothing’s working, there’s usually a solution out there somewhere.

Anyway, I hope this helps someone out there who’s struggling with the same issue. It’s not the most exciting thing in the world, but hey, when you finally get it working, it’s a pretty good feeling. Cheers!