Newbie Question

I just purchased am Explorist 500. I use MS Streets 2006 on my laptop and
handheld Jornada and wonder if I can convert maps for the gps unit. MS
Streets doesn't recognize the gps, it wants a comm port connection while the
gps has a USB connection. Is there a way to use it with MS Streets 2006?
Also, I plan to but an SD memory card in hopes of enevtually getting the
Topo 3D USA map as well as the street map. In order to cover California with
both, how big of a SD card would be best? Thank you for any help in advance,
Pat.

Danny wrote:


I don't have an eXplorist 500 so I'm guessing a little. If the
eXplorist has a NMEA output mode put it in that mode.

Then go to the Device Manager and see if you can find a virtual COM port
that is associated with the eXplorist. You can figure that out by
unplugging the eXplorist and watching to see which one goes away. Or
you can watch it while you plug the eXplorist in and see if a new COM
port appears.

Once you identify the COM port, select that port from S&T 2006 and it
should have a NMEA input and locate you.

The S&T 2006 software does a good job of finding the NMEA data it it is
on one of your COM ports so your problem all along may have been that
you needed to enable the NMEA output on the GPS or change it so the NMEA
mode.


Both of those will fit easily on a 256mb SD card. The SD cards are
getting so cheap on sale ($40 or less for 1Gb cards) that if you buy a
1Gb card you can put all the western states on it and also have tons of
space for storing routes, track, waypoints, etc.

If you wanted to make maps for the entire U.S., DR3NA takes about 1.5Gb
and Topo 3D a little bit less. So two 2GB cards would let you store all
the maps of both types.

Jack

--
Jack Erbes in Ellsworth, Maine, USA (jackerbes at adelphia dot net)
(also receiving email at jacker at midmaine dot com)

Danny wrote:
The eXplorist 400 I have works just great with MS Streets and Trips
connecting the 400 through the USB interface. When you plug in the
eXplorist, MS Streets and Trips will recognize the GPS and ask what type
of communications to use. Select the last option. As for converting
maps to load on an SD card, sorry, no.
I have ordered the Direct Route software, so I will be able to answer
your question about SD space to save such a map soon.

So you use MS Streets 2006 with your eXplorist? I thought you had to to
use DirectRoute, which is pretty limited. Any idea if MS Streets would
work with a Meridian Gold?

Thanks for any insights.

Mark Pace

Ron Hunter wrote:

Mark Pace wrote:


He is saying that he uses the NMEA output from eXplorist as the GPS
input for S&T running on a PC.

There are no provisions for exporting a map from S&T to eXplorists,
Meridians, or any other GPS receiver.

I'm not sure what you mean by DirectRoute being "pretty limited". It is
limited to use on the Magellan Meridians and eXplorists but the software
itself is not bad. The most recent version, V3.0, has the latest
NavTeq data on it.

Jack

--
Jack Erbes in Ellsworth, Maine, USA - jackerbes at adelphia dot net
(also receiving email at jacker at midmaine.com)