* * * * *
                                        
                     Yet more preparations for war driving
                                        
Yet more wardriving equipment. I borrowed a GPS (Global Positioning System)
unit from Gregory to hook to the laptop [1]. Yet after an hour of fooling
around I could not get anything from the GPS unit. Not one byte of data. 

Searching around for a possible answer, I read where you might need a NULL
modem cable to talk successfully to a GPS unit. Great! While I have a NULL
modem adaptor, it's buried with the rest of the computer equipment that I've
yet to unpack. Even if I had that, the adaptor itself is a DB-25 form factor,
while the cable (and serial port on the laptop) are both DE-9† form factors
so that would require yet more adaptors.

But it's a specially constructed cable for the unit so you would think the
wiring would be correct. So, using that logic (and not wanting to dig through
boxes looking for adaptors) I tried hooking the GPS up to my older laptop.

It worked. I can see data spewing forth from the GPS unit.

But the serial port on the new laptop doesn't appear to work.

Bummer.

† Although commonly referred to as “DB-9,” DE-9 is the correct designation—
the letters refer to the physical size of the connector while the number
referrs to the number of pins. A VGA monitor cable uses a DE-15 connector,
for instance.

[1] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2003/02/02.1

Email author at sean@conman.org

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