There is a big fuss about the new FTDI driver which damaged many counterfeit FTDI chips (well, it actually changed their internal configuration rendering them useless to most people). This didn’t hurt the producer of the counterfeit chips, however made …
I have the following programmer (a chinese clone actually, however it is equivalent): http://www.fischl.de/usbasp/ I have happily used it on my older WinXP computer, but as that computer has been retired I came across a problem of installing it …
PL2303 HXA USB to serial converters are discontinued by the producer. They have also made the latest driver block the old chips. This is OK if you want to use new hardware, but there may also be some devices that …