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Route USA and Mac iBook and GPS


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I need a little (ok alot) of help figuring out how to connect my eTrex to a graphite iBook running Route USA under OS X. The eTrex works, Route USA works, they are connected via a Garmin serial adaptor and a Keyspan USB "PDA" (aka DB9 serial) adaptor.

 

Route USA recognizes the adaptor is there, and has the baud rate and port correct, both are are set to NMEA, and says "connnection not initialized." to the GPS. So, if some kind person - can tell me what along the line might be going wrong, I'd be grateful. Have I got the wrong adaptor? Wrong pinout? I have the eTrex plugged in, but is there some button to push to get it to start talking? Should I throw in the towel and use something else?

 

I have a question in to Route 66, but of course it's the weekend. BTW, the software itself runs quite nicely under OS X - it's got fairly good coverage of metro areas. I've only had one weird problem with it on the iBook other than the GPS being finicky to set up. icon_frown.gif

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No, Route USA is a native OS X program. It is not a Virtual PC thing, which is why I bought it, actually. It was just about the only native X program I could find. It's made by Route 66 in the Netherlands and also comes in a Windoze version. They also make Route Europe for Win and Mac.

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If you are using the KeySpan PDA adapter for Palm, I believe it _will not_ work with your GPS. I remember reading this in another thread. You have to explicitly get the KeySpan _serial_ adapter. There's something different about the PDA adapter and the serial adapter.

 

-E

 

--

N35°32.981 W98°34.631

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Oh dear - the reason I got the PDA adaptor is that it's a DB9 and the serial adaptor is a mini-8 - the OS X driver supports both, so I assumed (and you know what they say about assuming) that they had simply renamed the old DB9 the PDA adaptor - the keyspan is the only one I could find with a OS X driver, so I was limited to a keyspan item.

 

If someone could figure out what kind of adaptor situation (9 to 8 and then the Keyspan?) I need, I'd be grateful - Foolish me thinking that the Route 66 site was pointing me at the right sort of adaptor when I needed to think more about it. Actually, I had a hard enough time finding ANY OS X adaptor that I was happy to try this one.

 

Ok, now for the URL for Route 66 - try www.route66.nl

 

if you actually want to buy it or the Europe version, try www.gps4fun.com - which is pretty much the only place I've found it in the US in stock.

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AHA! I see where the problem might be! When I asked for a serial-usb converter they only found the twin mini-8 and the PDA-db9 - hence we thought that last must be the one. That is item number USA-19Q however, there is indeed another Keyspan serial db9 adapter, the USA-19QW high speed serial adaptor - formerly known at the 19W - so, as the advice is to try that one, off the PDA adaptor goes to exchange for the 19QW. It should be here Tuesday, and (knock wood) we'll see then if all is well. If not, I may run screaming into the night, but I must say that this isn't the WORST configuration problem I've ever had, but it is up there in the peskiest, especially as I don't happen to have a pinout cable with me that would diagnose the silly problem! With some luck, it'll work, and I'll report on the exact configuration on Tuesday.

 

BTW, in case I forgot to mention it, the Route USA program isn't down to street address level, it's down to street level and it's rural coverage is about 80% - about 100% in metro areas, though. So, for instance, it choked on some street addresses in Greenville Mississippi, but it easily gets the highways and major roads there. So, you could probably find Doe's Eats, but not the the Sunflower market. I'm really hoping to get this thing working for a trip next week.

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Ok, so here's what happened - I got the Keyspan USB High Speed Serial Adapter - the USA-19QW model - from my trusty source, happily exchanging the PDA adapter. So, carefully reading and following instructions - here's the lowdown - the adapter installed in OS X just fine, but still didn't work in Route USA. So, following the suggestion of Keyspan's handy and useful manual, I deinstalled both the adapter and Route USA, and restarted in 9.2.

 

I reinstalled Route USA in 9.2 and then installed the USB adapter in 9.2 - unplugging and plugging in the adapter as required by the installers - flicked the display control panel to put me in 800x600 mode, and hit the GPS button, hit the set up button, and picked the keyspan adapter from the serial tool. Darned if it didn't work like a charm.

 

Now, it WILL NOT work in Classic mode, only as a straight start up into 9.2. Do I care?!? NO! Darned thing works fine that way.

 

So, eTrex plugged into Garmin PC/power adapter; Garmin adapter plugged into Keyspan High Speed USB Serial adapter; USB adapter plugged into Graphite iBook running OS 9.2 with Route USA.

 

Oddly, costwise, the combined adapters cost more than the GPS or the software. It took 4 tries over 3 weeks of asking 3 sources to get the right combo of stuff, though, so let my experience help others out! Off on a trip next week - we'll see how the iBook travels! Could be a hoot. If the 19QW turns out to be hard to find, I'll happily post my trusty source, I just don't want to be commercial!

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