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Hi All: I'm new to the group, but I do have a serious question.

In April I bought a new DELL XPS Laptop... great machine, but I'm not
doing a commercial here.! My problem is, I want to hang a GPS on one
of the inputs and, possible an autopilot on the output. I have a
Garmin handheld but will replace that with something that runs off boat
power and my old autopilot died a couple of years ago so that will be
replaced as part of this package replacement project.

Does anyone know a good place to go for recommendations or does anyone
on this group have any? I've already looked at the Garmin site but I
don't really know if that's where I want to go.

Any help or advice would be appreciated. Thanks

A good start would be a MiniPlex-Lite. This is an NMEA multiplexer that
offers galvanic isolation from the GPS, two extra inputs for future
expansion, one of which will automatically choose communication speed of the
connected devices (4800 baud for normal instruments and 38400 baud for an
AIS receiver) and a dedicated output to drive an autopilot. It gets its
power from the USB bus.
Another benefit of using this multiplexer is that it prevents the infamous
"crazy mouse" problem that occurs when windows sees a connected GPS when
starting up.

More info can be found on www.shipmodul.com
Meindert