On Mon, 22 Sep 2008 11:49:36 -0500, vitamin wrote: > Beartooth wrote: >> On Mon, 22 Sep 2008 08:45:00 -0500, vitamin wrote: >> >> >> > Beartooth wrote: >> > >> > > [btth@localhost dosdevices]$ ln -s /dev/ttyS0 com1 >> > > >> > > >> > Why the ttyS0? Is it really serial port? If it's USB->Serial, then it >> > should be ttyUSB0. >> > >> > >> Yes, it really is, precisely because of these cables; my >> experience with the little conversion gadgets has not been encouraging. > > > You didn't answer the question. Are you really connecting this device to > a serial port on your PC? Or a USB port? Sorry, I thought I did. The end of the cable at the PC has several pins in a trapezoid, and screws on both sides; it's also several times bigger than a USB port, and by no means flat. To use it (rarely, but sometimes) with a T42 Thinkpad, which I bought without realizing it lacked a *serial* port, I had to buy a special card, which has a very short cable like an ethernet cable plug at one end, and a gadget with pins and screws on the other. This is the only hardware that works, even under windows. Even if you add a device to *adapt* it to a USB port, it FAILS. SERIAL OR NOTHING, PHYSICALLY, is ALL I can use. Yes, I know, there are plenty of GPSs nowadays that not only use USB, but do it by design. The newest of mine are several years older than the earliest of those, cost me hundreds of dollars that I no longer have, and still work plenty well enough for my purposes. What's more, they're sturdy enough to keep in a shirt pocket even while hunting. So I don't replace them. So I am absolutely stuck with a *serial* port, and only a serial port. s-e-r-i-a-l -- hard to credit, perhaps, but true. I don't think USB had been invented when I bought the etrex; and even when I got the rino, the only cable *made* for it (bought from Garmin) had and still has a *serial* plug on the computer end. The software on the computer does color; *all* the GPSs are monochrome only -- no color GPS displays had reached the market. -- Beartooth Staffwright, PhD, Neo-Redneck Linux Convert Fedora 8 & 9; Alpine 1.10, Pan 0.132; Privoxy 3.0.6; Dillo 0.8.6, Galeon 2, Epiphany 2, Opera 9, Firefox 2 & 3 Remember I know precious little of what I am talking about.
