GPS-500 SiRF iii on Mac OS X
Introduction
Installation
Introduction
This was a rather annoying and round-about procedure to figure out, as Pharos says nothing about getting the GPS-500 SiRF iii to work under Mac OS X. Additionally, all tech support said that it does not work under Mac OS X. Thankfully, after doing some research on the device, it was actually fairly easy to get working on Mac OS X.
The official drivers for the iGPS 500 device are available for Mac OS X, but the GPS-500 SiRF iii is apparently unsupported. Due to them sharing the same chipsets, I figured it might work to use the iGPS 500 driver, but, much to my chagrin, those drivers did not work.
After doing quite a bit research(on GPS devices in general, due to have no prior experience to GPS devices), I noticed that most GPS devices were serial devices, and that majority of newer devices seemed to use a built-in USB-to-Serial converter. Thusly, after more research, I pinpointed the serial-to-USB chipset to "pl2303", which, thankfully, B.J. Arnoldus of BJA Electronics wrote a driver for. After installing the pl2303 driver, the GPS device immediately worked.
My hypothesis for why the standard drivers do not work would be that Microsoft stamped their device, disallowing all functionality while using the standard drivers. This is, by no means, a stretch of the imagination, as it would follow the "standard" Microsoftian methods.
The official drivers for the iGPS 500 device are available for Mac OS X, but the GPS-500 SiRF iii is apparently unsupported. Due to them sharing the same chipsets, I figured it might work to use the iGPS 500 driver, but, much to my chagrin, those drivers did not work.
After doing quite a bit research(on GPS devices in general, due to have no prior experience to GPS devices), I noticed that most GPS devices were serial devices, and that majority of newer devices seemed to use a built-in USB-to-Serial converter. Thusly, after more research, I pinpointed the serial-to-USB chipset to "pl2303", which, thankfully, B.J. Arnoldus of BJA Electronics wrote a driver for. After installing the pl2303 driver, the GPS device immediately worked.
My hypothesis for why the standard drivers do not work would be that Microsoft stamped their device, disallowing all functionality while using the standard drivers. This is, by no means, a stretch of the imagination, as it would follow the "standard" Microsoftian methods.
Installation
First off, go to http://osx-pl2303.sourceforge.net/ then download and install the driver, which should be named "osx-pl2303-0.3.1-10.4-universal.dmg" or similar. After the install is complete, you will have to reboot(or, if you possess the know-how, manually load in the drivers).
Now, after rebooting, you should be able to start up your favorite GPS program, and providing that it supports the SiRF chipset, the device should show up as "PL2303-12345678". I tested it with MacENC, with a baud rate of 19200.
Now, after rebooting, you should be able to start up your favorite GPS program, and providing that it supports the SiRF chipset, the device should show up as "PL2303-12345678". I tested it with MacENC, with a baud rate of 19200.
0.0039148330688477 µs