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As Far As I Know.

A strong magnet on a stick or string is useful for those 'curiously' tinned caches in pokey holes. A 'J' bent piece of wire will also do the trick.

I use: Lawrance I-go (Yellow) $65-75 Serial Cable $30 keyspan USB-Serial adapter $30 This system works wonderfully under Windows and Linux. (personally tested) The laptop receives NMEA via the usb port. (mapping software on laptop) The GPSr can receive NMEA formatted WP information from the laptop. (1012 wp capacity) All this for about $130-$150 (depending on your shopping savvy and patience) The reason that all GPSr use serial port communications is that it is the NMEA standard for inter-device communications. (4800 8n1 no flow control) things like a boat's autopilot, wind information, time, remote speed indication, etc. The real advantage of the I-finder GO is the battery life. (~40 hours without the backlight.)

Gpsbable will work. (hint: read the docs, build a batch file to do the work)

I use gpsbabel to get the same thing. It creates a HTML file with the names (modified, see below) hints etc. I use a perl script to modify the names of the caches UC12~112ch UC - Unknown cache 1 - Difficulty 2 - Terrain everything after ~ is the cache id. send the NMEA sentances to the GPSr (Lawrance I-GO) load the html page (palm or laptop) and I am off! Everything is done automatically with a script, merging gpx files, removing dupes, un-zipping gpx files from e-mail. All I do is press go when the terminal program is running.

I have the Ifinder Go (Yellow) with the data cable and have no trouble sending waypoints to it. (1070 at last upload) The unit accepts standard NMEA waypoint statements and you can create those with gpsbabel from the .gpx or .loc files avalible at the geocaching web site. I currently run a script to merge all of my .gpx files, remove duplicates, upload them to my laptop mapping app, and send them on to the gps. A nice little unit. great battery life, very fast acquisition, and comparing the track in my laptop to the maps, I can usually tell what lane I was driving in on the roads.

In truth, most cell phones have E911 handset side capability. This is a simpler solution to the requirements put forth at http://www.fcc.gov/911/ than server side triangulation. Therefore: It will have GPS. How you can access it is a diffrent matter. (Do I see a JavaGPSr app in the future?) Would I use one? NO! I submerge my IFinder Go often enough. I need to buy a new cell phone every other year (I have this thing about small electronics, they die around me.) The IPhone costs more than some of my cars. (more than this laptop in fact.)

Perhaps it should be mentioned that the default setting in GPSBabel is snlen=6, and your script should be changed to -o nmea,snlen=7 (I had to run a test, but it sure-nuff works now.)

I used to just load all the closest caches into the GPSr. Now it is a little more complex.. (GPSr, gpsdrive on the laptop)

thats what happens when scripts evolve. I still had the nmea as a pipe. I could even make this an alias now. (Ok I could before.) Is there a way to script the equivalent to gpsdrive -f *.gpx ... I am still learning scripts...

Well, I read the docs, and shortened the script... --- gpsbabel -i gpx -f 499776.gpx -f 553854.gpx -f 853345.gpx -f 853350.gpx \ -x duplicate,location,shortname\ -x sort,shortname\ -o gpx -F merged_with_no_dupes.gpx gpsbabel -i gpx -f merged_with_no_dupes.gpx -o gpsdrive -F - |awk '{print "insert into waypoints \ (name,lat,lon,type) values (\"" $1 "\",\"" $2 "\",\"" $3 "\",\"" $4 "\");" }' >>wp.sql gpsbabel -i gpx -f merged_with_no_dupes.gpx -o html -F ~/Desktop/geocache.html \ -o nmea -F nmea.out ---

I use GPSDrive, Mysql, a Lawrence iFinder Go, and a cable... The shell script has a bunch of lines like this ---- gpsbabel -i gpx -f 853345.gpx -o gpsdrive -F - |awk '{print "insert into waypoints \ (name,lat,lon,type) values (\"ST-" $1 "\",\"" $2 "\",\"" $3 "\",\"" $4 "\");" }' >>wp.sql gpsbabel -i gpx -f 853345.gpx -o html -F ~/Desktop/Geo-Sea-Tac.html gpsbabel -i gpx -f 853345.gpx -o nmea -F - >>nmea.out ---- and then, it sends the wp.sql to the mysql server, the nmea.out to the term program, and that's it! GPSDrive shows the caches nearby, (the cache is prefixed with a W, H, ST etc. to show which html file to look in.) At last count I am uploading about 600 waypoints to my GPSr so that I can detach and walk to the cache. Correction, 700.