street atlas, earthmate, and ibook dual usb

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Tho X. Bui - 03 Dec 2004 03:03 GMT

Hi there. Anybody use the Earthmate GPS and Street Atlas 6.0
combination on their ibook? How well does it work? Pitfalls?

Thanks,

Tho

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The Tufted Nerble - 03 Dec 2004 04:34 GMT

> Hi there. Anybody use the Earthmate GPS and Street Atlas 6.0
> combination on their ibook? How well does it work? Pitfalls?

I haven't the experience to reply cogently to your question, but I can
offer an observation that might be helpful if you haven't invested in
the software yet.

I bought Street Atlas 6.0 at DeLorme's HQ a couple of years ago. I got
it at 50% off because, as they told me, they've stopped all development
on SA for the Mac.

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on a button he can't pronounce.

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Tho X. Bui - 03 Dec 2004 05:24 GMT

> > Hi there. Anybody use the Earthmate GPS and Street Atlas 6.0
> > combination on their ibook? How well does it work? Pitfalls?
[quoted text clipped - 6 lines]
> it at 50% off because, as they told me, they've stopped all development
> on SA for the Mac.

Thanks, I already have the software. I recently acquired the Earthmate
unit (used w/o docs or software), and am trying to figure out how to use it.

Tho

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Bruce in Alaska - 03 Dec 2004 18:16 GMT

> Hi there. Anybody use the Earthmate GPS and Street Atlas 6.0
> combination on their ibook? How well does it work? Pitfalls?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Tho

SA6 for Mac does NOT deal with the USB connected Earthmate.
I have both connected to a WindTunnelG4 and the Earthmate
only works when I have SA running under VPC.

Bruce in alaska

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Tho X. Bui - 04 Dec 2004 02:52 GMT

Bruce in Alaska wrote:

> > Hi there. Anybody use the Earthmate GPS and Street Atlas 6.0
> > combination on their ibook? How well does it work? Pitfalls?
[quoted text clipped - 6 lines]
> I have both connected to a WindTunnelG4 and the Earthmate
> only works when I have SA running under VPC.

Thanks Bruce, I wonder what version Earthmate this is? http://www.bizrate.com/marketplace/product_info/details__cat_id--304,prod_id--52
99953.html

Tho

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Verne Arase - 22 Dec 2004 22:56 GMT

>> Hi there. Anybody use the Earthmate GPS and Street Atlas 6.0
>> combination on their ibook? How well does it work? Pitfalls?
>
> SA6 for Mac does NOT deal with the USB connected Earthmate.
> I have both connected to a WindTunnelG4 and the Earthmate
> only works when I have SA running under VPC.

First off, SA6 is completely unsupported - Delorme quit development years
ago.

Secondly, all USB-based GPSes that I know of are really serial GPSes with a
built-in serial/usb bridge. The jerks at Delorme won't support a Mac, and
won't even tell you what serial bridge is in use so you can download the
driver yourself.

The best solution currently available for the Mac is Route 66 2004 with a Ray
Ming TN-200 GPS. The USB is probably the only connection which makes sense,
since it limits you to needing one power connector and a single cable from
the laptop to the GPS. A bluetooth GPS would either force you to run the GPS
on batteries, or require yet another power connector.

Route 66 USA 2004 has an *enormous* database of places, and can route between
any two places in the continental US. Unfortuantely, it's not a great
solutions for "How do I get there?" navigation using the GPS as a start point
(distance to destination doesn't work), and route instructions are enormously
over-complicated (as a road merges with your interstate, each merge and
divergence will appear to be an actionable turn when in fact you just putter
along without noticing it happened).

This is a real shame as Route 66 is a pretty nice, reasonably priced program
- albeit a Windows port. It does, however, seem to suffer from intermittantly
vanishing print abilities which fluctuate with system updates.

-- Verne

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Tho X. Bui - 22 Dec 2004 23:32 GMT

> >> Hi there. Anybody use the Earthmate GPS and Street Atlas 6.0
> >> combination on their ibook? How well does it work? Pitfalls?
[quoted text clipped - 10 lines]
> won't even tell you what serial bridge is in use so you can download the
> driver yourself....

Thanks all for your input.

The Earthmate unit in question is actually an old RS-232 unit. I use a
USB-RS232 adapter with it and it works fine with the copy of SA-6.0 that
I have with my ibook-600 in OS 9.2.2.

Tho

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Abbott Schindler - 24 Dec 2004 20:53 GMT

I don't know about the Earthmate, but I can say for sure that Street
Atlas 6.0 works just fine on my Pismo, Al PB, and Quicksilver, and has
done so on OS X 10.2.8 through 10.3.7 using my Garmin eTrex (two
different GPSes).

These are both serial units, so I've got a KeySpan USB Serial Adapter to
connect to my USB 1 or 2 ports. Not a problem.

Two things:
1. I made a disk image of the SA data disc; load the image onto your
Desktop before launching SA.
2. Once in SA, everything works except the display of driving
directions. If you want to see those, you can copy them and paste into a
Sticky note, Word doc, etc.

I've also got Route 66. While it has much more detail than SAUSA, I find
that a) it's dog-slow compared with SA, and b) I like the display of GPS
tracks in SAUSA (Route 66 just shows where you are, not how you got
there).

I find that I'm using SAUSA much more than Route 66 even though it
requires running in Classic mode. The speed of map redraws, plus the
font scaling, work better for me when I'm on the go. On the other hand,
when planning routes, I find Route 66 to be far more useful.

Abbott

> > >> Hi there. Anybody use the Earthmate GPS and Street Atlas 6.0
> > >> combination on their ibook? How well does it work? Pitfalls?
[quoted text clipped - 18 lines]
>
> Tho

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H.B. Elkins - 23 Dec 2004 16:07 GMT

>Hi there. Anybody use the Earthmate GPS and Street Atlas 6.0
>combination on their ibook? How well does it work? Pitfalls?

The last version of Street Atlas to run on the Mac was 4.0.

I used SA 4.0 on my iBook, running under OS 9, and an Earthmate with the USB
powered adapter. Software drivers for this adapter are not available for
download from DeLorme's Web site but a CD-ROM with the drivers can be ordered
free of charge from DeLorme.

I have not tried this setup under Classic in OS X.

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nospam - 23 Dec 2004 18:39 GMT

> The last version of Street Atlas to run on the Mac was 4.0.

i have street atlas 6 and it runs fine on os 9 or osx+classic.

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H.B. Elkins - 29 Dec 2004 14:06 GMT

>> The last version of Street Atlas to run on the Mac was 4.0.
>
>i have street atlas 6 and it runs fine on os 9 or osx+classic.

Where did you find such a program? The last available version of SA I have found
for the Mac is 4.

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The Tufted Nerble - 24 Dec 2004 00:27 GMT

> >Hi there. Anybody use the Earthmate GPS and Street Atlas 6.0
> >combination on their ibook? How well does it work? Pitfalls?
[quoted text clipped - 5 lines]
> download from DeLorme's Web site but a CD-ROM with the drivers can be ordered
> free of charge from DeLorme.

Your news about the CD-ROM is a real contribution to this thread. Thank
you.

In return I can report that SA 6 runs fine under OS 9.2.2 on my
600MHz14" dual0USB iBook. However, the staff at DeLorme's HQ told me
that with as of 6 they have ended all Mac support. Two years ago they
were clearing the Mac stuff out at half price. It might be worth
writing them to see if anything's left.

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Send a nucula rocket to the Horsehead Neblear.

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H.B. Elkins - 29 Dec 2004 14:12 GMT

>Your news about the CD-ROM is a real contribution to this thread. Thank
>you.

The driver for the USB power cable is something called the "Northstar driver" or
something similar. The Windows versions used to be available for download, but I
had to contact DeLorme and specifically request the Mac driver, which in turn
was mailed to me. When I misplaced the CD-ROM, they sent me another copy (and I
promptly burned two or three backups).

>In return I can report that SA 6 runs fine under OS 9.2.2 on my
>600MHz14" dual0USB iBook. However, the staff at DeLorme's HQ told me
>that with as of 6 they have ended all Mac support. Two years ago they
>were clearing the Mac stuff out at half price. It might be worth
>writing them to see if anything's left.

Perhaps I am confused and got SA 4 (which came with the first GPS unit I got
from DeLorme, as a Christmas present several years ago) mixed up with the
software version that came with the thinner, newer model GPS that I bought as a
replacement when my original unit died. I need to go and check.

A shame that DeLorme dropped development for the Mac -- the most recent Windows
versions of Street Atlas will do spoken turn-by-turn commands if you have
planned a route and are tracking with the GPS, and now they have a Bluetooth GPS
unit that works with both PC laptops and handhelds.

Since I got a Palm Tungsten T3 for Christmas, I'm thinking about investing in a
Blue Logger. ;-)

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Mac Forum / General / Portable Macs / December 2004

street atlas, earthmate, and ibook dual usb