"Flying Pig" wrote in message
...
----- Original Message -----
From: " Sir Gregory Hall, Esq·" åke
Newsgroups: rec.boats.cruising
Sent: Tuesday, August 27, 2013 2:38 PM
Subject: Seeking Raymarine Raystart RS125 GPS owners in Fernandina Beach
FL to Brunswick GA



What communication interface does it use? The usual NMEA 0183?

If so you could hook it up to a laptop that has that connector and see if
the laptop receives any output from it. I suspect your NMEA 0183
com port has failed. Might even be a software failure and not a hardware
failure.

Have you upgraded the instrument's O/S lately. If so roll it back to
see if the com port works again.

--
Sir Gregory


Hi, Neal,

The unit is either SeaTalk or NMEA capable. It's connected to NMEA because
my prior setup was, and it became plug-n-play for all the instruments and my
computer's serial connection by attaching to the plotter's NMEA cable.

There's no SW to this unit; it used to talk to my plotter, autopilot, and
computer; now it speaks to none of them.

I pinned out the connections between the GPS and NMEA (to the plotter,
thence onward) cables and all is as it should be between those points, but
no talking to the plotter.

There have been no changes to SW or hardware in years. The "no fix" message
happened on the way back from a sailing trip with my son and his family a
few weeks ago, and I've been wrestling with this ever since.


Sounds like you have two problems. "No fix" usually means the unit can't
find the satellites enough to get a position. This shouldn't affect the
com port. But, perhaps the com port sends nothing until a fix is obtained?

Many GPS units work that way. In lieu of sending bad info they send no
info.

If so I would examine your GPS antenna and connections. A friend of mine
had a similar problem with a Garmin unit and it tuned out to be the external
antenna had failed where the co-ax cable entered. Seems salt water corrosion
got to it. Unfortunately it was not a screw connector but hard-wired. So he
bought a new antenna and it cured the problem.

--
Sir Gregory