Yet more wardriving equipment. I borrowed a GPS (Global Positioning System) unit from Gregory to hook to the laptop [1]. Yet after an hour of fooling around I could not get anything from the GPS unit. Not one byte of data.
Searching around for a possible answer, I read where you might need a NULL modem cable to talk successfully to a GPS unit. Great! While I have a NULL modem adaptor, it's buried with the rest of the computer equipment that I've yet to unpack. Even if I had that, the adaptor itself is a DB-25 form factor, while the cable (and serial port on the laptop) are both DE-9† form factors so that would require yet more adaptors.
But it's a specially constructed cable for the unit so you would think the wiring would be correct. So, using that logic (and not wanting to dig through boxes looking for adaptors) I tried hooking the GPS up to my older laptop.
It worked. I can see data spewing forth from the GPS unit.
But the serial port on the new laptop doesn't appear to work.
Bummer.
† Although commonly referred to as “DB-9,” DE-9 is the correct designation—the letters refer to the physical size of the connector while the number referrs to the number of pins. A VGA monitor cable uses a DE-15 connector, for instance.