Thanks for everyone's input. I've followed the links everyone mentioned. I found FTDI's offerings very quickly. I see Philips offerings, but they have quite a few so I'll have to review more closely which one(s) would actually be appropriate.

I've emailed FTDI asking this, but is it possible to have their USB parts appear to the host as something other than a COM device? A COM device would be accpetable, but it'd be really slick if the FTDI part could be configured to appear as an HID/keyboard device.

Is FTDI an established/reliable source? It looks like they have distributors all over the world, but it also looks like virtually all email (comments about the site, support, etc.) goes to some guy named Fred.

Craig Steiner