March 12, 2009 08:00
I bought a little usb GPS (sirf chip, the one linked from macenc.com) to play with.
I found that these things behave somewhat unusually when connected to a Mac. In essence, the buffer of serial data is never "flushed" so the same data is being read over and over at maximum speed.
This is true for both MacEnc (I can see the lines flying by in GPS log window) and for any other program connected to the serial port device (such as when using "screen").
Edited:
Well, question asked is question answered. It appears that the device wants to use their own modified version of PL2303 driver. It remains to be seen if their driver would work with standard PL2303 devices - it would be unfortunate if it did not.
I'll leave the post here in case anyone stumbles upon the same issue.
I found that these things behave somewhat unusually when connected to a Mac. In essence, the buffer of serial data is never "flushed" so the same data is being read over and over at maximum speed.
This is true for both MacEnc (I can see the lines flying by in GPS log window) and for any other program connected to the serial port device (such as when using "screen").
Edited:
Well, question asked is question answered. It appears that the device wants to use their own modified version of PL2303 driver. It remains to be seen if their driver would work with standard PL2303 devices - it would be unfortunate if it did not.
I'll leave the post here in case anyone stumbles upon the same issue.