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Adam Kalsey

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The Amazing Google

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This blog post is over 21 years old. It's possible that the information you read below isn't current and the links no longer work.

24 Sep 2002

The power of Google continues to amaze me. I was at a garage sale months ago and came across an old 320x280 digital camera with an AOL logo on it. It’s a cheap piece of junk with no features, but for $1 it’s a perfect camera to keep in the glove box of my car. It connects via a serial cable, but attached to the end of the serial cable was a USB-Serial converter and a three foot USB cable. Not having the drivers for the converter or even knowing who makes it, I stuck it in the closet.

Today I had a need for just such a converter, so I dug the device out of the closet and looked it over. It’s about three inches long and around an inch wide. The only markings on it are a sticker with a serial number, some certification symbols, and two lines of text: "USB Serial Adapter" and "Made in Taiwan." Not much to go on when searching for a driver. But it has a distinctive look, so I figured if I came across a picture of it I’d recognize it.

I opened up Google and searched for USB "Serial Adapter" Taiwan. The third search result was a product page for a cable maker in Taiwan. And what’s in the photo? That’s my USB adapter.

The site doesn’t have any drivers though. Not to worry, from the caption for the photo, I now am armed with a product ID number: BF-810. Again I turn to the mighty Google. A search for BF-810 driver turns up the driver page for BAFO Technologies as result number one. I downloaded and install the driver and it works.

Thanks, Google!

Comments

Quentin
October 31, 2003 3:45 AM

Haha! I was looking for the same thing on Google, came apon your site, and followed the search. The driver page for Bafo has changed: http://www.bafo.com/bafo/prodrivers.asp Thank you! It works!

Fred
January 23, 2005 8:17 PM

And again it works. Did the same thing as the original poster, looked for the picture and came across Driver.com. Not the best site, http://www.bafo.com/bafo/prodrivers.asp was way better. Thanks to the men and women who work to make Google the best it can be.

This discussion has been closed.

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