On Thu, 29 Aug 2013 11:11:46 -0400, "Flying Pig"
wrote:

We believe that the unit has bitten the dust - or there's some problem which
makes it intermittent.

Yesterday, doing some other debugging suggested by RM, I had an instance of
it running NMEA sentences in and out, as seen in the diagnostics screen on
my plotter. However, by the time I'd gotten downstairs and into Terminal to
see if it was echoing down there, I had an alarm saying I'd lost position in
the plotter, and data stopped flowing.

It refused to reaquire satellites, something it's never done in our viewing
of it (green blink) so far, and took a long time to acquire after yet
another power cycle. However, that acquisition didn't lead to any input on
the diagnostics, nor reception in Terminal below. Sounds like it's dead...

But I'd still love to pop it onto someone else' setup for confirmation.
I've got RM's suggested replacement, a GPS105 from Digital Yacht (bought
through Bethel Marine in FL, great folks to work with), on the way for
tomorrow arrival. That will involve rewiring (well, making new connections
to) the NMEA inputs to the plotter and onward to the computer/autopilot, but
that's trivial.

L8R, y'all

Skip

Skip,

I wonder whether you have given any consideration to what happens if
you are at sea and your gps system dies. Perhaps a small gps that
reads lat. and Lon. and a large scale chart might be a useful thing to
have if all else fails.
--
Cheers,

Bruce in Bangkok