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Hi,
My grandkids are interested in geocaching and I decided to help them out. A friend had a Garmin GPSMap 76 that he has really never used and now it is ours. It came with a serial cable and our computer has only usb ports.
I was wondering if anyone has used a serial adapter with success and/or if familiar with the unit?
They are excited to get started (10 and 8 year olds) but from all the reading I have been doing, I know I’ll need to be able to download some stuff from someplace. We can’t really afford anything fancier right now, but I hope we can find a way to make it work.
Any help would be great.Three newbies.
Mike
You are on the right track to get a serial adapter. Unfortunately, these can be tricky to use. If you are using a desktop, you might find it easier to get a serial port card for your computer (around $10).
Of course, there is nothing to stop you from just manually entering a few waypoints into your unit and going out to find a few boxes. It isn’t like you need to enter more than a handful to see if they will enjoy the exercise. Just hold down the “Enter” button to get to place where you enter waypoints, then use the rocker switch and the enter button to change the coordinates to your new waypoint. This unit is easy for the basics, so I’m sue you will catch on after the first couple entries.
My laptop at work doesn’t have any serial ports. As such I have two different USB to serial adapters and they both work pretty good.
Also, some desktops actually have a serial port on the motherboard as a row of header pins. You need a special cable to bring the serial port to the back of the PC. I built a cable for my new home office PC and it works well.
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