The other day the mailman dropped by a Rand McNally Navman Streetfinder III. Another cool eBay find. The software is kinda old (2000) and you can only export maps to the palm of a small size. Maps over 10k sq. mi. won't work. And, it locked up a couple times under Windows XP. But, if I'm ever out in the field needing directions / distances, etc. and away from maps.google.com, this will be good in a pinch.
The there was the GPS unit itself. It took a while to acquire the first time, (but that was to be expected) and when it looked like it would nearly work, it threw a fatal exception and needed to be reset. I let this happen twice before I wrote this off to some kind of incompatibility between the Palm app and the Palm OS 3.5, which I can substantiate. Again, this was software that I assume was written in the late '90s or 2000, in the heyday of the Palm III series.
So it was looking like I paied $30-ish bucks for something that *might* be hacked into a robot or balloon, but a quick look at palmgear.com showed other software possibilities. Like PathAway III. I'm on my trial now, and i rather like it. A lot like UI-View where you bring your own maps, etc. It is shareware. It's about $50 after the trial is up. But, it had a status screen on it and saw my GPS receiver come up after a few minutes....
Another look at palmgear showed some freebies that just printed out status screens from the decoded NMEA data. That is probably all I am going to need. And below was what I needed to find out how to get it ready as a balloon payload or for attachment to a laptop.
http://www.radiohound.com/randgps.htm
http://www.chadphillips.org/zaurus/palmgps.html
Definately go get one of these eBay to play with.
I also saw some Palm III modems (33.6k) for about a buck each. These come with email, and other network software. Might be the beginnings of a TNC.
73
Scott
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