"Steve" wrote in message
...
All of this doesn't sound good for retaining the USB GPS input..

How about a Serial to USB converter/adaptor hardware 'thingy'.. Any thing
like that around, where I could take the NMEA out, off the connector
before
it goes to the converter??

Well, technically it would be possible. A device, quite a bit more
'intelligent' than a standard USB-serial converter would have to be
programmed to listen in on the communication between the GPS and the laptop.
This would require several hours of programming by a skilled USB firmware
programmer. So for that price, you could even buy 1 or 2 new laptops :-)

Regards,
Meindert