Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

​I have a Eurotherm 2416 temperature controller which travels with me. I was using a desktop computer to run an EPICS IOC, but I realized this was foolish and am replacing it with a laptop. The desktop has a built-in serial port, while the laptop uses a USB-to-serial port. I'm running the same EPICS configuration with some updated modules, but the serial communications which worked on the desktop do not work on the laptop. I get errors with "No reply from device".

I'm hoping someone can explain the confusing results of my search of tech-talk. Some posts suggest that I just plug in the USB-to-serial and use the /dev/ttyUSB0 device which is automatically created. Others suggest that I need to use a command like "modprobe ftdi_sio vendor=0x67b product=0x2303", which gives the error "ftdi_sio: unknown parameter 'vendor' ". 

Question: do I need to use the "modprobe ftdi_sio" command, and if so why is the 'vendor' parameter giving it trouble?

Details:

Eurotherm 2416 temperature controller with serial interface

base-3.15.1

asyn-4-26

stream-2-6a

sateco Eurotherm protocols from X.L. Wang