Like many people, i buy, time to time, some chips or shield from Chinese (dx, aliexpress, ebay) vendors, unfortunately my FTDI FT232 breakout was a fake chip, here he is a interesting thread about that.

Jordi Binefa , (thank, you made my day), describe a quickly and easy method to recover a bricked chip, you need have Linux, you can use a live cd/usb instead installed version if you prefer. run terminal, then:

$ lsusb
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 0403:0000 Future Technology Devices International, Ltd H4SMK 7 Port Hub

$ sudo apt-get install make gcc libftdi-dev
$ wget http://rtr.ca/ft232r/ft232r_prog-1.24.tar.gz
$ tar -zxvf ft232r_prog-1.24.tar.gz
$ cd ft232r_prog-1.24
$ make
$ sudo ./ft232r_prog —old-pid 0x000 —new-pid 0x6001

(i have just corrected this line):
sudo ./ft232r_prog –old-pid 0x000 -new-pid 0x6001
to,
sudo ./ft232r_prog ––old-pid 0x000 ––new-pid 0x6001

if any case of help, sudo ./ft232r_prog you will see the list of options

Under Windows you need to see:

Don’t forget to roolback to a old drivers if you don’t want to brick you device again.