At the conclusion of the GPS class at REI tonight a gentleman had a question I could not answer. I promised him that I'd try to find a solution for him.

If I understood him correctly he was given a Garmin V and traded it for an Etrex Vista. He has a serial cable that may have come with the V that he is trying to use on the Vista. In any event he says the cable uses four pins at the GPS end and have a 9 pin serial connector at the other end.

The problem is that he's trying to connect this to what he assumes is a 15 pin serial connector on his laptop. He purchases a 9-pin-to-15-pin adapter, but the PC keeps saying "cannot find device". His laptop has no 9 pin connectors.

What's he doing wrong here? I told him that his laptop may not have a serial connection, it may only have USB, but that was only a guess. If that's the case what cable does he need? He contacted Garmin and they weren't any help.

Thanks,
~erik~

There is no such thing as a 15 pin serial connector, old style connectors are 25 pin. In the PC world only old computers have 25 pins. The 15 pin connector is most likly a monitor connector. There is a chance he either blew the serial circuits in the GPS or the monitor circuits in the laptop or both.

Allen, I believe you're right. I have a new Dell laptop that has a 15 pin connector for running projectors for presentations and external monitors. I don't think it has a serial port. The thing is plugged into a docking station at work, so I can't check. I know even the mouse connector is a USB though.

So what would this guy do to communicate between his PC and his GPS?

~erik~

quote:

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Originally posted by ~erik~:

So what would this guy do to communicate between his PC and his GPS?
~erik~

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My Work Dell laptop has the following ports 2 usbs, 1 network, 1 printer, 1 serial (9 pin), 1 monitor and even 1 tv connection. But I have heard some laptops don't have serial ports. If that is the case the only choice he has is a USB to Serial converter. I ran one with my Palm for a long time without trouble. Never done one with GPS. Of course as I said in the first reply he may have blew the serial circuits if that happened nothing will work.

The usb converter is the only way to go. My Laptop doesn't even have a 9 pin port so I had to get a converter. I put it all in place about 10 days ago. It works like a champ. I can't believe I waited so long.

Thanks guys, I'll e-mail him. Maybe I can get him out to the next GGA meeting. I think we'll be doing paperless geocaching presentations, so perhaps they'll be PCs, GPSRs, and cables aplenty for him to try.......

~erik~