On Sun, 24 Aug 2014 20:53:00 -0400, "Sir Gregory Hall, Esq."
wrote:

That's not what Wayne said. He said, and I quote, "I suspect that if
you had reversed the two wires that it would have worked fine."

Reversing the *two wires* means connecting negative to positive.

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It's important to understand that there is no ground reference
implicit with the NMEA 183 interface standard, unlike a battery
connection. Therefore reversing the two wires is a perfectly valid
approach which probably would have solved your problem.