Thanks for that, Gadelhas. I reviewed the CP2102. It looks like it is a it is a bridge between a USB host and UART microcontroller like a PIC 18F2550/4550, in a similar manner to the VFC chips recommended by Darrel Taylor and spcw1234 in their below postings. Do you concur?

I guess a USB host bridge is the way I have to go to get two USB ports supported to meet my requirement. My decision on which chip to use (CP2102 or VNC) then boils down to which is the simpler to program and implement. Since the VNC chips can be provided with a pre-compiled firmware to support different USB interfaces, that is definitely a speedup on my development. However, if you already have code that implements the USB interface between an 18F4550 and CP2102 and are willing to share the code, that would be a rapid development process also.

Are you willing to share your code? I don't need the pincount of an 18F4550, so would probably use 18F2550 as smalleer chips, but the code should be almost identical.

Regards, John