

This is necessary the ProlificUsbSerial kernel extension is owned by root. Sudo nano /System/Library/Extensions/ProlificUsbSerial.kext/Contents/ist

So I do a quick Google search looking for any info on this product. So, now I know that it is made by ATEN International Co. Vendor ID: 0x0557 (ATEN International Co. I highlighted it in the USB Device Tree and found this: I drilled into the USB menu option and found the device listed as ‘Composite Device’. That was solved easily enough by plugging it into my Macbook and opening up the ‘About This Mac’ option on the Apple menu and clicking the More Info… button and then the System Report button.

The first challenge was that I did not even know the manufacturer or part number of this particular USB Serial adapter. So, I thought I would add a post here covering the details.

It took me a few weeks of trial and error and searching around to finally resolve the issue. So, I was determined to figure out how to get it to work, as I no longer have any physical machines running Windows or with serial ports. I had a VM running Windows XP and I was not able to get it to work properly in that environment either. However, I had tried using it on my Macbook running OSX Lion and noticed that it did not show up in my device list in ZTerm. I have never had an issue using it with Windows machines. I’ve had this USB Serial adapter for many years which I use to attach to network equipment consoles for initial configuration and setup.
