Garmin 60csx serial port

hello,

Does anyone know / understand the four pin serial port on the Garmin
60CSx?

I have purchased a serial cable to attach my Garmin to a PDA to use
with the National Geo Topo series and it is not working out. That is
a bigger issue and if anyone understands how to make that work that
would be great.

For now I am trying to get the pieces sorted out.

Is the four pin serial port really a serial port? I have seen
conflicting notes on this.
Is it COM 1 / 9600 baud?

the settings menu on the Garmin is difficult to use to set options.
If I choose NEMA in/out I can not access the baud setting and it
defaults to 4800. I would like to make sure that it is transmitting
on COM 1 @ 9600 and I can not determine if that is the case.

In general if anyone understands what is going on with the serial
output of the Garmin that would be helpful.

In the bigger picture, I am cabled up to an HP IPAQ 200 series PDA and
the Garmin and the PDA are not communicating. through the National Geo
Topo series, which runs fine on the PDA.. It seems like it is almost
there but isn't so unless someone actually knows how to make this work
I guess I need to figure out one piece at a time.

Thank you.

kartoga wrote:

I don''t know those particular Garmin & PDA but I have used Garmin GPS & two
different PDAs with both NMEA and Garmin protocol. (See
http://www.mjcoon.plus.com/page8.htm )

Why do you expect NMEA to be 9600 when, as you say, it should be 4800?

The serial port only needs three pins: ground and data each way. No signal
pins, so speeds must match. The Garmins I have have four pins because one is
for power input to the GPS and nothing to do with serial communication. Not
knowing which pin is which will make data transfer problematic!

Why do you mention COM1? That is only relevant to the PDA (which might have
more COM ports for use with Bluetooth etc). But is that the end which has
four pins? Full serial ports have signal pins as well, hence the usual "D"
connector has nine pins. But the PDA would not be "transmitting". Hence my
confusion.

Mike.
--
If reply address is invalid, remove spurious "@" and substitute "plus"
where needed.

On Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:08:36 -0800 (PST), kartoga


Is your SW using NMEA 0183 protocol or can it also speak directly
Garmin?

Sure it is

The details can be found here:
http://www8.garmin.com/support/faqs/faq.jsp?faq=68

COM1 has absolutely no meaning on the 60CSx. It only defines the
serial port number on the PC or PDA.



NMEA has a defined rate of 4800 Baud:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NMEA_0183

why not just find a free topo map for the Garmin ?

serial port knowledge.... a fleeting topic.

As others have mentioned, yes, the 4 pins are good.
I have a serial cable for my very old Garmin 12 - works just fine.

You could actually test this on a computer that has a serial port,
and bring up some Garmin software and see if it detects the GPS ?

There are usually a couple of common stumbling blocks
if you think back to the old dialup modem days of serial connections.

The data rate must be the same - others are saying it will be 4800bps

The GPS will look like a "modem" and the PDA will look like the "computer"
which won't work...