How to make Garmin see Garmin?

Beartooth · Post by **Beartooth** » Sun Sep 21, 2008 2:35 pm

I have Garmin's topo map software for the USA, 2008 version, and
also a very old MapSource MetroGuide (ca. 1998) installed under wine. All
is well -- except the biggest thing. Neither program can detect the etrex
vista nor the rino 120, using Garmin's cables.

The topo couldn't before I added the road maps,so that's not the
trouble.

Both, on the other (<shudder> XPProSP2 <shudder>) hard drive of
the selfsame machine detect both perfectly well -- as do DeLorme,
topo.com, and maptech software -- so the hardware isn't the problem,
either.

The cables use the serial port. My suspicion is that wine isn't
telling the software about that. How do I make it do it??

--
Beartooth Staffwright, PhD, Neo-Redneck Linux Convert
Fedora 8 & 9; Alpine 1.10, Pan 0.132; Privoxy 3.0.6;
Dillo 0.8.6, Galeon 2, Epiphany 2, Opera 9, Firefox 2 & 3
Remember I know precious little of what I am talking about.

Post by **dimesio** » Sun Sep 21, 2008 3:06 pm

Beartooth wrote: The cables use the serial port. My suspicion is that wine isn't
telling the software about that. How do I make it do it??

http://winehq.org/site/docs/wineusr-gui ... ure#AEN407

Beartooth · Post by **Beartooth** » Sun Sep 21, 2008 4:22 pm

On Sun, 21 Sep 2008 15:06:31 -0500, dimesio wrote:

Beartooth wrote:
The cables use the serial port. My suspicion is that wine isn't
telling the software about that. How do I make it do it??

http://winehq.org/site/docs/wineusr-gui ... things-to-

configure#AEN407

Hmmm .... I'm probably being very stupid about that tilde. Fwiw,
I got wine by yum install, iirc. My .wine is in /home/btth ; I get :

[root@localhost ~]# cd /home/btth
[root@localhost btth]# ln -s /dev/ttyS0 com1
ln: creating symbolic link `com1': File exists
[root@localhost btth]# ls|grep .wine
[root@localhost btth]# cd .wine
[root@localhost .wine]# cd dosdevices
[root@localhost dosdevices]# ln -s /dev/ttyS0 com1
ln: creating symbolic link `com1': File exists

I deleted it, and ran the command again.But even after closing
and re-opening the map software, telling it to find a GPS still gets me a
failure.

--
Beartooth Staffwright, PhD, Neo-Redneck Linux Convert
Fedora 8 & 9; Alpine 1.10, Pan 0.132; Privoxy 3.0.6;
Dillo 0.8.6, Galeon 2, Epiphany 2, Opera 9, Firefox 2 & 3
Remember I know precious little of what I am talking about.

vitamin · Post by **vitamin** » Sun Sep 21, 2008 5:13 pm

Beartooth wrote:Hmmm .... I'm probably being very stupid about that tilde. Fwiw,
I got wine by yum install, iirc. My .wine is in /home/btth ; I get :

[root@localhost ~]# cd /home/btth

Indeed. NEVER EVER use system as root! http://wiki.winehq.org/FAQ#head-96bebfa ... 78b0d41014

And "~" you just type it as is. It will be auto expanded in shell into your home dir.

Beartooth · Post by **Beartooth** » Sun Sep 21, 2008 6:14 pm

On Sun, 21 Sep 2008 17:13:40 -0500, vitamin wrote:

Beartooth wrote:
Hmmm .... I'm probably being very stupid about that tilde. Fwiw, I got
wine by yum install, iirc. My .wine is in /home/btth ; I get :

[root@localhost ~]# cd /home/btth
Indeed. NEVER EVER use system as root!
http://wiki.winehq.org/FAQ#head-96bebfa ... 78b0d41014

And "~" you just type it as is. It will be auto expanded in shell into
your home dir.

OK, I did what the site said. Then I had to remove the extant
com1, which had ignored a chown command, as root.

Now I have this :
[btth@localhost ~]$ cd ~/.wine/dosdevices
[btth@localhost dosdevices]$ ln -s /dev/ttyS0 com1
ln: creating symbolic link `com1': File exists
[btth@localhost dosdevices]$ rm com1
[btth@localhost dosdevices]$ ls
c: d:: e:: z:
[btth@localhost dosdevices]$ ln -s /dev/ttyS0 com1
[btth@localhost dosdevices]$ ls
c: com1 d:: e:: z:
[btth@localhost dosdevices]$

-- and still can't connect to the GPS (which I do have set to the
Garmin interface, yes; and I've tried both with preference set to com1
and set to auto).

--
Beartooth Staffwright, PhD, Neo-Redneck Linux Convert
Fedora 8 & 9; Alpine 1.10, Pan 0.132; Privoxy 3.0.6;
Dillo 0.8.6, Galeon 2, Epiphany 2, Opera 9, Firefox 2 & 3
Remember I know precious little of what I am talking about.

James McKenzie · Post by **James McKenzie** » Sun Sep 21, 2008 8:02 pm

Beartooth wrote:

On Sun, 21 Sep 2008 15:06:31 -0500, dimesio wrote:

Beartooth wrote:

The cables use the serial port. My suspicion is that wine isn't
telling the software about that. How do I make it do it??

http://winehq.org/site/docs/wineusr-gui ... things-to-

configure#AEN407

Hmmm .... I'm probably being very stupid about that tilde. Fwiw,
I got wine by yum install, iirc. My .wine is in /home/btth ; I get :

[root@localhost ~]# cd /home/btth

Ouch! Never run Wine as root. This can cause a number of problems, one
being that .wine will not function properly.

[root@localhost btth]# ln -s /dev/ttyS0 com1

Again, try another comX port like com3. com1 may already exist and
cannot be destroyed/created in this manner.

James McKenzie

vitamin · Post by **vitamin** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 8:44 am

Beartooth wrote:[btth@localhost dosdevices]$ ln -s /dev/ttyS0 com1

Why the ttyS0? Is it really serial port? If it's USB->Serial, then it should be ttyUSB0.

Beartooth · Post by **Beartooth** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 10:09 am

On Mon, 22 Sep 2008 08:45:00 -0500, vitamin wrote:

Beartooth wrote:
[btth@localhost dosdevices]$ ln -s /dev/ttyS0 com1
Why the ttyS0? Is it really serial port? If it's USB->Serial, then it
should be ttyUSB0.

Yes, it really is, precisely because of these cables; my
experience with the little conversion gadgets has not been encouraging.

Question : when I make com2, com3, etc., do I still want ttyS0?
Or should they be ttyS1, etc.?

--
Beartooth Staffwright, PhD, Neo-Redneck Linux Convert
Fedora 8 & 9; Alpine 1.10, Pan 0.132; Privoxy 3.0.6;
Dillo 0.8.6, Galeon 2, Epiphany 2, Opera 9, Firefox 2 & 3
Remember I know precious little of what I am talking about.

Beartooth · Post by **Beartooth** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 10:53 am

On Mon, 22 Sep 2008 15:07:22 +0000, I Beartooth wrote:

[...]

Yes, it really is [a serial port], precisely because of the
cables; my
experience with the little conversion gadgets has not been
encouraging.

Question : when I make com2, com3, etc., do I still want ttyS0?
Or should they be ttyS1, etc.?

Discovery in the meantime :

[btth@localhost dosdevices]$ file e::
e::: broken symbolic link to `/dev/sr1'
[btth@localhost dosdevices]$ ls
c: com1 com2 d:: e:: z:
[btth@localhost dosdevices]$

So should I remove e:: somehow? Replace it somehow?

If I have to do "yum remove wine," "yum install wine," and a new
wine install of the map software, it'll be worth it. Once I can run that
stuff and make it talk to the GPSs under linux, I can have an M$-free
house again.

--
Beartooth Staffwright, PhD, Neo-Redneck Linux Convert
I try to be paranoid, but I just can't keep up.
Remember I know little (precious little!) of which way is up.

vitamin · Post by **vitamin** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 11:49 am

Beartooth wrote:On Mon, 22 Sep 2008 08:45:00 -0500, vitamin wrote:

Beartooth wrote:
[btth@localhost dosdevices]$ ln -s /dev/ttyS0 com1
Why the ttyS0? Is it really serial port? If it's USB->Serial, then it
should be ttyUSB0.
Yes, it really is, precisely because of these cables; my
experience with the little conversion gadgets has not been encouraging.

You didn't answer the question. Are you really connecting this device to a serial port on your PC? Or a USB port?

Beartooth · Post by **Beartooth** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 3:19 pm

On Mon, 22 Sep 2008 11:49:36 -0500, vitamin wrote:

Beartooth wrote:
On Mon, 22 Sep 2008 08:45:00 -0500, vitamin wrote:

Beartooth wrote:
Why the ttyS0? Is it really serial port? If it's USB->Serial, then it
should be ttyUSB0.

Yes, it really is, precisely because of these cables; my
experience with the little conversion gadgets has not been encouraging.
You didn't answer the question. Are you really connecting this device to
a serial port on your PC? Or a USB port?

Sorry, I thought I did. The end of the cable at the PC has
several pins in a trapezoid, and screws on both sides; it's also several
times bigger than a USB port, and by no means flat.

To use it (rarely, but sometimes) with a T42 Thinkpad, which I
bought without realizing it lacked a *serial* port, I had to buy a
special card, which has a very short cable like an ethernet cable plug at
one end, and a gadget with pins and screws on the other.

This is the only hardware that works, even under windows. Even if
you add a device to *adapt* it to a USB port, it FAILS.

SERIAL OR NOTHING, PHYSICALLY, is ALL I can use.

Yes, I know, there are plenty of GPSs nowadays that not only use
USB, but do it by design. The newest of mine are several years older than
the earliest of those, cost me hundreds of dollars that I no longer have,
and still work plenty well enough for my purposes. What's more, they're
sturdy enough to keep in a shirt pocket even while hunting.

So I don't replace them. So I am absolutely stuck with a *serial*
port, and only a serial port. s-e-r-i-a-l -- hard to credit, perhaps, but
true.

I don't think USB had been invented when I bought the etrex; and
even when I got the rino, the only cable *made* for it (bought from
Garmin) had and still has a *serial* plug on the computer end.

The software on the computer does color; *all* the GPSs are
monochrome only -- no color GPS displays had reached the market.

--
Beartooth Staffwright, PhD, Neo-Redneck Linux Convert
Fedora 8 & 9; Alpine 1.10, Pan 0.132; Privoxy 3.0.6;
Dillo 0.8.6, Galeon 2, Epiphany 2, Opera 9, Firefox 2 & 3
Remember I know precious little of what I am talking about.

vitamin · Post by **vitamin** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 4:06 pm

Beartooth wrote:On Mon, 22 Sep 2008 11:49:36 -0500, vitamin wrote:

vitamin wrote:You didn't answer the question. Are you really connecting this device to
a serial port on your PC? Or a USB port?
Sorry, I thought I did. The end of the cable at the PC has
several pins in a trapezoid, and screws on both sides; it's also several
times bigger than a USB port, and by no means flat.

To use it (rarely, but sometimes) with a T42 Thinkpad, which I
bought without realizing it lacked a *serial* port, I had to buy a
special card, which has a very short cable like an ethernet cable plug at
one end, and a gadget with pins and screws on the other.

Ok sounds like a PC-Card with a standard 9-pin serial port on it. I'm asking because it's hard to guess which port is your device connected to.

Then it should be com1 (ttyS0) unless you have some "hidden" ones, like modem for example. You might want to check with some hardware information program what all serial ports you have.

Beartooth · Post by **Beartooth** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 4:54 pm

On Mon, 22 Sep 2008 16:06:32 -0500, vitamin wrote:

Beartooth wrote:
On Mon, 22 Sep 2008 11:49:36 -0500, vitamin wrote:

[...]

You didn't answer the question. Are you really connecting this device
to a serial port on your PC? Or a USB port?

Sorry, I thought I did. The end of the cable at the PC has
several pins in a trapezoid, and screws on both sides; it's also
several times bigger than a USB port, and by no means flat.

To use it (rarely, but sometimes) with a T42 Thinkpad, which I
bought without realizing it lacked a *serial* port, I had to buy a
special card, which has a very short cable like an ethernet cable plug
at one end, and a gadget with pins and screws on the other.
Ok sounds like a PC-Card with a standard 9-pin serial port on it. I'm
asking because it's hard to guess which port is your device connected
to.

The card is only on the machine I use *least* for these apps; it
runs only XP, no linux at all; that's the T42. I use it for maps when I
have to; otherwise it never gets booted.

The house contains five desktop-sized computers including an
erstwhile server (a Dell Poweredge SC1420, which belongs to a list I
helped start up, and which I'll probably buy; it has two physical serial
ports); two thinkpads (a T30 and a T42); and a little EeePC. Most are
anything but new (one new this summer -- on my wife's desk, downstairs).

The newest, my #1, the one we've been talking about, has two hard
drives. Till now I've had to dual boot it to <retch> XP in order to do
math apps, and use another for all my regular activities (or else fire up
the T42 with the card, which is a lot of bother. Its only virtue is that
it is portable.)

On the XP drive, the GPSs do connect to the software suites, with
the same cables attached to the same spot on the back of the case.

They all or nearly all have wine 1.x installed; but only on my #1
have I managed (so far -- first recent attempt) to get any map software
to actually launch, let alone run.

The three newer ones were all built to my budget by a friend who
does me that favor; he sees to it that each has one physical serial port,
just for the GPSs. The oldest second-hand one also has one physical
serial port.

The T30 still has a serial port, and runs Fedora; it's a
guestroom loaner. I installed wine on it, but was unable to get any of my
map software to launch under wine, much less run.

Then it should be com1 (ttyS0) unless you have some "hidden" ones, like
modem for example. You might want to check with some hardware
information program what all serial ports you have.

The only hardware browser I've been able to find is called lshw,
with lshw-gui; I fired it up on this machine, read through everything
line by line, and found the word "serial" only in contexts where it meant
"serial number."

Other than the difference between serial and USB, everything I
know about hardware would go comfortably in a gnat's eye. What am I
looking for?

Is it possible for a machine with only one physical serial
connector to have multiple serial ports? I thought a port was a physical
thing, like an ethernet port, a telephone line port, or a VGA connector
-- a male or female object of a certain shape and number of connectors,
like a power cord/plug.

--
Beartooth Staffwright, PhD, Neo-Redneck Linux Convert
Remember I know precious little of what I am talking about.

Beartooth · Post by **Beartooth** » Tue Sep 23, 2008 3:21 pm

On Mon, 22 Sep 2008 21:53:41 +0000, I Beartooth wrote:
[...]

The only hardware browser I've been able to find is called lshw,
with lshw-gui; I fired it up on this machine, read through everything
line by line, and found the word "serial" only in contexts where it
meant "serial number."

Other than the difference between serial and USB, everything I
know about hardware would go comfortably in a gnat's eye. What am I
looking for?

Is it possible for a machine with only one physical serial
connector to have multiple serial ports? I thought a port was a physical
thing, like an ethernet port, a telephone line port, or a VGA connector
-- a male or female object of a certain shape and number of connectors,
like a power cord/plug.

Just out of excessive optimism, I dug out the old adapter for
using serial cables with a USB port; plugged first the etrex cable and
then the rino one, through it, into a USB port. Neither became visible to
the software, with or without the transfer option in the Preferences set
to ignore Garmin devices on serial ports. <sigh>

--
Beartooth Staffwright, PhD, Neo-Redneck Linux Convert
Remember I know precious little of what I am talking about.