When the traditional 9-pin serial port was phased out of most PC specs, its function was replaced by USB ports. Adapters are common, and RacerMate provided USB-serial adapters containing devices and drivers by Prolific. They looked like the picture in figure 2, and connected the USB port to the stereo adapter in figure 1.
The short story is this: Prolific has been terrible at providing working drivers for modern operating systems. In fact, they never actually worked completely reliably on Windows XP. The advent of Windows Vista and 7 exposed the problems even more acutely. Prolific's behavior in providing drivers to its customers and cable manufacturers has been a failure. If your PC is failing to blue-screen it is often the drivers for the Prolific devices. This issue affected cycling device manufacturers SRM, Saris-CycleOps, and RacerMate. They have all since moved to FTDI devices, and they all ship FTDI technology with current product. RacerMate has since engaged FTDI to build their own adapter from USB direct to the CompuTrainer stereo cable. It looks like Figure 3, but may also appear as a one piece unit with no wire.
Rather than confuse you showing how to install imperfect workarounds for Prolific drivers (and leave you dealing with machines that will still BSOD on you), our recommendation is just this simple: Ditch your Prolific-based adapters, and get USB-Serial adapters that use FTDI technology. Period.
There are many others.
RacerMate is defunct, and nobody makes the usb to stereo adapters. Don't email us, we don't sell hardware. You could try an FTDI USB to serial adapter with one of these Serial to stereo adapters, but that comes with no guarantee. Again, no need to email us. This is all we know, and we don't sell hardware parts. Your best bet is to ditch your CompuTrainer or VeloTron for a modern wireless trainer. Many are far better than RacerMate's products ever were.
We do not provide support to users who insist on using Prolific devices. They are flawed and are the first source of any trouble you may be having with PC to CompuTrainer or VeloTron communications.
On Feb 13, 2025, our streaming service partner made a change that breaks ErgVideo streaming playback in the desktop application. It came as an unannounced surprise.
The ErgVideo application has been out of development for several years and supported only for current subscribers. Costs to update and further maintain the application and web services infrastructure now exceed revenues.
As such, we have:
Refunded any subscription that was affected by an outage Feb 13. That is, any subscription that renewed after Jan 13, 2025.
Terminated all recurring monthly subscriptions as of today, Feb 17, 2025. You will see no new charges.
Further, on May 31, 2025, we will:
Remove all web services and the website. This means that the free ErgVideo desktop software will stop working on that date.
Be assured that these are not temporary measures while the outage exists. We are no longer investigating a fix. It is truly the end of the ErgVideo application, web services, and support.
If you purchased a legacy video license (DVD or one-time download), you will still be able to playback videos in any desktop player like Windows "Films and TV" app, or "Windows Media Player"**. What won't work (after May 31) is the desktop software ("ErgVideo 6.009") that controlled your trainer with its own synchronized video player. Since our first release in 2007, we've always provided, maintained, and supported the desktop software for free.
Thank you for your business and understanding,
Paul Smeulders
ErgVideo Inc.
** If you did a standard install, the video files are in .wmv format and located in subfolders of C:\Users\Public\Videos\ErgVideo. Each subfolder is named by the title of the video.