Serial cables

[Mychaela Falconia]

Hello everyone,

I have a survey question: what are the members of our community using
for their 2.5 mm headset jack serial cables?  From which vendor?  And
if it's a USB-serial adapter, what kind?  PL2303?  CP2102?  FTDI?

I currently have 4 cables in total:

* My first one is from fonefunshop.co.uk (linked to from OsmocomBB
  pages, but the shop isn't owned by anyone from Osmocom gang, so I
  was able to order from them) - well-made physically and works
  perfectly reliably, but the PL2303 chip can only do 115200 baud max.

* Then I got a Sysmocom CP2102 cable from Das Signal - I am not
  comfortable with ordering anything from Sysmocom myself because of
  the person who owns that shop, so I was asking other members of our
  community to get me a CP2102 cable so I could flash experimental
  firmwares at a higher baud rate.  This cable worked initially,
  including all of the high baud rates up to 812500, but then it
  started making a poor connection: it would make or break the
  electrical connection depending on how the cable happens to be
  flexed mechanically, and then it stopped working altogether.

  Does anyone else here use Sysmocom cables?  DS, do you use one
  yourself?  Do they work for other people?

* Then I ordered a CP2102 cable from UberWaves on ebay.  This cable
  works at 406250 baud, but for some reason 812500 baud fails: the
  connection to loadagent gets lost when I issue "baud 812500" in
  loadtool with this cable.  And no, this problem can't be blamed on
  any inherent drawbacks of the CP2102 chip compared with FTDI or
  whatever, as Sysmocom's CP2102 cable worked fine until it stopped
  working because of poor construction, and all CP2102-based Pirellis
  work fine too.

* Finally, I got an FTDI cable from UberWaves as well.  At first he
  wanted to send me two FTDI cables instead of CP2102 "because FTDI is
  the best", but I explained to him that FreeCalypso is not OsmocomBB
  and that our host tools are written to work with CP2102.  When the
  CP2102 cable failed to work at 812500 baud, I tried the FTDI one.
  Please read the doc/High-speed-serial write-up (included in the
  fc-host-tools-r3 release I just put out) to understand about the
  difficulty with FTDI adapters and the hacky non-upstreamable Linux
  kernel patch needed to make them work with FreeCalypso.

Once I applied my hacky patch to my Slackware Linux kernel's ftdi_sio
driver, the last cable (FT232RL from UberWaves) started working
perfectly for me at all baud rates, including 812500.  Because this
cable works for me now and I don't mind having a hacky non-upstreamable
local patch in the Linux kernel on my laptop, my own needs are now
satisfied and I don't need another cable.  But I wonder what other
members of our community are using, and most importantly, what serial
cable solution should we recommend to newcomers.

So, what are others' experiences?

M~