Garmin Serial Port to USB Cable and Driver

[bvimatelot]

Thanks, to all. I've pretty much done everything as advised and am aware of all (I hope?) problems with regard to NMEA/Garmin interface, high number ports and updated drivers.

I'll try to get a generic cable as suggested (not easy on this small caribbean island) and report back.

[fastfilm]

I went through the same struggle you have when I bought a new laptop and connected my GPSMAP76 to it. I just use it to download routes and points to and from the handheld, not for real time navigating. That being said, if you just "shop" around for the right driver on the sites you should find one that works. All the adaptors, or at least the chip sets or electronics inside are made by a couple of companies. So, try different drivers rather than changing adaptors.

Good luck.

[bvimatelot]

Originally Posted by fastfilm

I went through the same struggle you have when I bought a new laptop and connected my GPSMAP76 to it. I just use it to download routes and points to and from the handheld, not for real time navigating. That being said, if you just "shop" around for the right driver on the sites you should find one that works. All the adaptors, or at least the chip sets or electronics inside are made by a couple of companies. So, try different drivers rather than changing adaptors.

Good luck.

Thanks - I have already tried that but it didnt work. I'll do another search and may get lucky.

Its going to have to be the way to go, though. Because - buying a "generic" cable wont work as it wont have the Garmin plug on one end....or am I missing something here?

[dacust]

Originally Posted by bvimatelot

Thanks - I have already tried that but it didnt work. I'll do another search and may get lucky.

Its going to have to be the way to go, though. Because - buying a "generic" cable wont work as it wont have the Garmin plug on one end....or am I missing something here?

You would have to have the Garmin DB9 cable. That DB9 connector would plug in to the DB9 on the generic adapter. Then the USB of the adapter goes to the PC.

Most Garmins came with the DB9 cable, and the USB ones were separate. So, hopefully you have it. If not, then there's another cable you need. Should be able to find one on eBay.

As an earlier poster suggested, you might find the driver for the one you got, though.

-dan

[Rex Delay]

I use a Garmin 76 Map linked to laptop running Garmin Mapsource charts. Charts are loaded on both the laptop and GPS. On old laptop with XP, just plugged it and and it went. With new laptop (vista), have to tell it where to look for the GPS and had to get a serial-USB adaptor but do not recall any drivers or other complex stuff - I am a computer moron. An adaptor cable and manually telling it where to look should work.

[bobelon]

We just had this problem occur in Bonaire. We found a schematic for garmins cable and hacked into it. something like brown out, yellow in, red power and black common ground for power and data. We had to go to a local computer nerd and buy a female serial port cable and cob it from the Garmin out to the plug we bought so we could plug into the male serial port/usb adaptor. Anyway it is not hard just tedious and everything like how a serial port plug is wired and how the Garmin is wired is online. As for the installation the suggestions about finding the correct com port are right on. Oh, and always plug the serial port/usb adaptor cable into the SAME usb port.

[bvimatelot]

Quick Update.

I searched pretty extensively for drivers but none worked. I bought a cable to-day, made by "Cables to Go" (34 bucks on-island, 30 in the US), downloaded their win7 driver from their web-site and everything works fine!! (anybody want a usb to serial port cable, slightly used, complete with installation disc for XP??)

[Rhumbline]

When not sailing, I work as a software developer, and have recently been battling similar problems with USB-to-serial adapters that worked fine on Windows XP but fail to work reliably under Windows 7. The problems come when communicating small data packets with an external device through a usb-to-serial adapter - the same situation when your GPS is communicating with a Windows 7 computer. So far I have tried Belkin, Prolific (Micro Innovations and others using Prolific chips) and FTDI. Even using the latest drivers none of them would work reliably out-of-the-box. The only device I could get to work reliably under Windows 7 was the FTDI (www.ftdichip.com) adapter, and even with this device I had to tweak the communications parameters to get it to work; in particular, I extended the "latency timer" from the default 16ms to 80ms, using the "advanced" tab in "port properties" in the Device Manager. FTDI allows you to adjust this property, whereas other manufactuers do not. The default value can also be set by editing the ftdiport.inf file, and changing the "16" to an "80" in the last line, below.

[FtdiPort232.NT.HW.AddReg]
HKR,,"UpperFilters",0x00010000,"serenum"
;HKR,,"ConfigData",1,01,00,3F,3F,10,27,88,13,C4,09 ,E2,04,71,02,38,41,9c,80,4E,C0,34,00,1A,00,0D,00,0 6,40,03,80,00,00,d0,80
HKR,,"ConfigData",1,11,00,3F,3F,10,27,00,00,88,13, 00,00,C4,09,00,00,E2,04,00,00,71,02,00,00,38,41,00 ,00,9C,80,00,00,4E,C0,00,00,34,00,00,00,1A,00,00,0 0,0D,00,00,00,06,40,00,00,03,80,00,00,00,00,00,00, D0,80,00,00
HKR,,"MinReadTimeout",0x00010001,0
HKR,,"MinWriteTimeout",0x00010001,0
HKR,,"LatencyTimer",0x00010001,16

If you need help trying this, send me an email.