MacSailing.net

Hey all, I am a small keelboat sailor on Lake Ontario (Canada)

I am planning on doing more cruising these next few years, and thought planning or following my progress in the trip would be fun, and informitive.

I have a G3/800 ibook I want to use as my onboard machine, because of size, battery consumption and I have it sitting around.

I have a yellow Etrex, which I have used as my onboard GPS for years, it has the garmin serial.

I bought one of the inexpensive prolific chip usb to serial cables... but on mac or pc I have yet to get communications to work.. (on one pc direct with serial cable only)

I have updated the etrex on the pc before, so, the question is.. usb-serial is too cheap?? I dont have another serial device to try..

OR maybe the etrex is not usable for realtime???

Does anyone know?

thanks

James

To use the original yellow Garmin ETrex with GPSNavX or MacENC do this:

1) Quit GPSNavX

2) Install the Prolific driver (linked in the help in the "Connecting to a GPS" section)

3) Plug the USB to Serial Adapter into your Mac, connect Garmin to adapter and power on Garmin. Make sure the Garmin is set to send NMEA data.

4) Launch GPSNavX or MacENC

5) Select "Connect" on the "GPS" menu

6) Select "Settings" button

7) Select port USBSerial

8) Select rate 4800

9) Select type Garmin

If all is well the UTC field will update in the GPS panel.

Ok so the sequence in which I do these things makes a difference.. because all those settings are the same that I have done (not on GPSnavX yet - dont have a demo I can try yet)

Great.. thanks.. I will try to worry more about sequence next time I try, and look forward to giving the GPSnavX product a try.

James