A silly question regarding FTDI232 talking to each other

[cbarberis]

My question here may sound dumb but perhaps I am overlooking something and there is always other talented people that have better solutions. I have a board that I designed using a PIC24H and it talks serially to a PC using a FTDI232 usb virtual serial port. Now, I need to talk to this board from another board utilizing another PIC micro, obviously I can no longer use just the serial line (and I don't have access to a secondary serial port), so I guess the only way to do it is to use a PIC that can work as a USB host on the other board, except the code for the usb host I don't believe is supported by the CCS compiler so it becomes a far more laboriuos project in terms of coding. Is there a simpler method to doing this?

[Ttelmah]

First, why can't you 'just use the serial line'. Add a jumper or switch to disconnect the FTDI232. Much the simplest solution....
Second, don't you have any other interface available - I2C?. For short distances, this is ideal, while if longer distances are needed, add a I2C UART.
Third, instead of using a PIC supporting USB 'OTG', which will be a _lot_ of work, add something like the FTDI Vinculum.

Best Wishes

[cbarberis]

Ttelmah thank you for your help,
Unfortunately I cannot modify the existing board I will be talking to, with either hardware or firmware changes as this is a current production board, so that leaves out jumpers or using spi or i2c. I think your sugestion of using something like the Vinculum is probably my only alternative, because this new board I am trying to make is part of a test fixture and I will be using just a few of these I was wondering if there were any USB host to serial adapters out there, I did google such but with no luck.