With a whole bunch of gliding and engineering instruments equipped
with serial ports, I have found no reliable way to use a USB to serial
converter. The problem is the allocation of ports, as mentioned by
another responder. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. Even
when they do, they often hijack a port already being used by another
application.

My colleagues and I have dealt with this by using only computers with
a real serial port or in the case of some laptops, a docking station
or port replicator that has a serial port built in.

You can't always rely on devices with a USB connector either. I have
found a couple that have internal serial connections and an internal
USB to serial converter that behaves exactly like the after-market
ones.

Just don't so it! The effort of fighting conflicts is just too much
(unless you have a Mac).

Mike