[olug] Trying to connect a Garmin Legend to an eeePC

[Rob Townley]

On Sun, Apr 26, 2009 at 12:17 AM, Paul H. Lewis <phldml3 at cox.net> wrote:
> I got a eeePC for Christmas and just love it.  In particular my wife
> picked up a 701SD at Toys-R-Us.  Well, I enjoy geocaching and decided I
> wanted to try and connect my Garmin Legend to the eeePC so I could log
> in to the site will I was mobile.  Went to Best Buy the other day and
> bought a Dynex USB to serial cable, since the Garmin cable only connects
> to a 9 pin serial port.  Downloaded GPSMAN from the ASUS site,
> configured the software and of course it didn't recognize the GPS.  So
> I've scoured the web for 5 days now and I think I've mucked up my eeePC
> more than I should have.
>
> I followed the instructions on this site:
> http://wiki.eeeuser.com/howto:usbserial
>
> and have had no luck getting the eeePC to recognize the Garmin Legend
> and now my eeePC will not automatically connect to my  wireless network
> anymore.  I have to manual connect to the network and it takes the PC a
> few minutes to accomplish the task.  I think the problem with the
> network may lie in the replacement usbserial.ko file that I have
> replace, but I'm not exactly sure how that could be.  Can someone advise?
>
> TIA,
> Paul
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>

You remembered to set the serial baud, bits and parity correctly, right?

For the price of some of those USB2serial adapters, it might be the
same amount to get a USB / Bluetooth GPS Receiver.  The following is
$45.00.  The big advantage to USB over serial is that the GPS can stay
charged longer.  The disadvantage is that it might drain your eee
batteries when you forget to disconnect.
http://www.amazon.com/i-Trek-M7-i-Trek-Bluetooth-Receiver-Configurable/dp/B0013CHFK2

Or a SDIO GPS card, or if the eee has pcmcia, or minipci?

Just happened to come across a posting the other day on laptopgpsworld
about GPS systems that work with both BlueTooth and USB.
http://www.laptopgpsworld.com/laptop-gps-hardware/516-dual-usb-bluetooth-gps-receivers.html

A few years back, i purchased a junky bluetooth gps receiver that
powered itself via USB.  Spent days trying to get my machines to
recognize it via USB.  Finally, called Tech Support - "You can't use
the USB cable to get data, but you must use USB for power.  Can only
use bluetooth for gps data."   Seemed like the dumbest design decision
ever made.  i suppose they thought they were saving money by not
having an extra UART?