Upgrading From Garmin Iii Plus

[+Crabby Lady]

I have a Garmin III + and am thinking about upgrading to the Garmin 76cs mapping gpsr. I have a serial cable that connects my III+ to my laptop and the cigarette lighter. I also have an external magnetic mount antenna. Does anyone know if these items are compatible with the 76cs? I would hate to have to spend the money to upgrade these things too. Also what would I gain by connecting the 76cs to a pda?. I have a Palm Tungsten 2 and I have DeLorme Handheld Street Atlas 2005. ( I also have the DeLorme Bluetooth logger which I am selling on EBay because I don't like it).

 

Crabby Lady

 

[+Renegade Knight]

I am fairly sure thre 76CS uses the same round plug for serial as the III. I know for a fact the 60CS does.

 

What you would gain by connecting the 76CS to a PDA is a PITA arragnment. The 76CS will route, autoroute, and do everthing a PDA will help you do without cables and two screens to look at. The sole advantage of a PDA is a larger screen and more mapping programs that work with it.

 

my two cents.

[peter]

The power/serial cable should be compatible, but there are a couple issues with the external antenna. The first is that a different connector is used on the two units. The III+ uses a BNC connector whereas the 76cs uses a much smaller MCX connector. The second issue is the voltage provided by the unit to power the external antenna. The III+ delivers about 5 VDC but the 76cs only delivers about 2.5 VDC. Older external antennas from Garmin and others were designed to work only with the 5 VDC supply and won't work well (or even at all) with the lower voltage. More recent antenna designs are compatible with both voltages.

 

So if your antenna is compatible with a 2.5 VDC supply you could just get a BNC to MCX converter plug (costs about $10 from gpsgeek), but if it's the older design that needs 5 VDC you'd need a new antenna. GPSGeek charges about $20 for the Gilsson antenna that works very well, so you might consider that anyway instead of getting the adapter for the connector.

[+Crabby Lady]

Thanks to everyone for their replies. I guess I still will go with the 76cs as soon as I sell my other GPS. As long as there is a good chance the cable will work, I can still connect it to my laptop and use Street Atlas in the car. That screen is much easier to see than a small gps unit. If all else fails, I can still use my trusty III + in the car and the 76 while out geocaching. It's more important to know where I am when geocaching than when I am in the car. LOL

Crabby Lady