Hiacom 303MMF and USB

[nineback]

I have been trying to get my 303 MMF to work with a USB port. A couple of questions.

I am using the firewire/PS2 cable that came with the BT-401 package. I am using an adapter that I got with a mouse to convert PS2 to USB. When I plug in the USB connector to the computer I get the new hardware message and them and unknown device message. I go to the unknown device under USB in the device settings and chose upgrade driver. I have downloaded a couple of USB GPS driver but when I tell it to install them I get the message that the current driver ( which is none) is better and it will not let me install the USB driver.

I also tried it with a mouse adapter that convert from PS2 to serial bout could not get the device recognized. Perhaps you need a splitter to provide power when using the serial hookup but this shouldn't be the case with USB.

Wverything works fine using bluetooth or the CF slot.

Any suggestions?

Tom

[DavidW]

The Haicom USB cable uses a Prolific PL-2303 chip. Mine uses the standard Prolific VID and PID so generic PL-2303 drivers work.

I appreciate that this is far from clear, though the cable should work fine with the HI-202E driver on the CD you probably got with your GPS (certainly that model and, I think, all other Haicom and many non-Haicom GPSes use that Prolific USB to serial chip - it's a very popular choice for a lot of reasons). If you can't find suitable drivers, or you want the latest drivers available, you can go to http://tech.prolific.com.tw and click Download, then put 2303 in the Keyword Search box and press Go.

If you read down, near the bottom of the results there's three options listed under "Drivers for Windows -- PL-2303 USB to Serial Bridge Controller". "wd_pl-2303_v20018.zip PL-2303 USB to Serial Certified Logo Driver for Windows XP" works fine under Windows XP for me - though you may have to tell XP not to suggest a driver, and you will choose a driver - I can't remember the specific wording, but it's not the default. That said, using this certified driver help - because XP likes certified drivers if possible.

If you hit trouble, you might find the Installshield option works better. I've never tried it, though.


If you're using XP or Me, I suggest making a System Restore point before trying to install drivers just in case anything goes wrong and you want to roll the system back.



I don't recognise the "mouse adaptor" you're talking about - but if it's the Haicom 9 pin serial cable, you need to connect the round male plug to a PS/2 port for power only, and the female round plug to the cable to the GPS. The 9 pin D connector has to go into a serial port - and you use that serial port to receive the GPS data.


There's no serial input to the GPS using a cable - so you can only configure the GPS in CompactFlash mode. This, apparently, is a hardware limitation; it was done this way to avoid trying to deal with two inputs to the UART on the GPS chipset.



David

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