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Yes, there are two main ways of running SA and GPSy at the same time:
GPSy-Link (Recommended):Start up StreetAtlas but do not enable its GPS support. Start up GPSy and then use the StreetAtlas GPSyLink feature to display your position in StreetAtlas. This option is the most stable in terms of serial port control and enables GPSy to fully control the GPS, but the amount of data that GPSy can send to Street Atlas over GPSyLink is limited to the current position.
Forced serial-port cohabitation (Not-recommended):Start up Street Atlas first and enable its GPS tracking. Make sure you have a location fix in Street Atlas first, then start up GPSy. GPSy will complain that the serial port is busy. Force the serial port reset by Option-Resetting GPSy (menu item). GPSy should be able to gain control of the serial port while Street Atlas still maintains read-only access. Quit StreetAtlas before quitting GPSy since Street Atlas thinks it has serial port control. Then quit or reset GPSy immediately next. This method has the advantage that SA4 gets the full NMEA data set from the GPS unit.
Note: It is undetermined which application really has serial port control, thus this method could yield to locked ports (resetting the machine will clear them). Do not do any bi-directional GPS control (uploading/downloading waypoints, GPSy NMEA commands, etc.) while cohabiting serial ports. This method is inherently unstable, so be sure to save your work in other applications before embarking on cohabitation.
Thanks to Wes Palmer for testing the second method on his machine. He notes that StreetAtlas doesn't support NMEA-0183 v2.0 very well so you'll have to leave it in v1.5 with Garmin units.
Street Atlas® 3.0 is usually mounted as a CD-ROM. Many users have asked if they can mount in on their hard drive since their PowerBooks don't have internal CD-ROMs. It is possible to extract a 50 MB subsample of Street Atlas ® that shows all highway and freeway information. This is usually enough for cross-country navigation. If you're the owner of a large hard drive, you can even mount the entire 600MB SA3 image onto your HD using ShrinkWrap. Registered users who wish to obtain this info should contact technical support.
Street Atlas ® 4.0 and 6.0 allow you to extract portions of the map database onto your hard drive.
Occasionally, the API link between GPSy and StreetAtlas can get stuck. If StreetAtlas doesn't respond to GPSy try these measures (try each one in turn):
The GPSyLinks for iPC MapFanII and the Internet Map Servers use AppleEvents and are much more robust. We encourage all map developers to include an open AppleEvent protocol to their products.
We have found an apparent bug in GPSy 3.16 that prevented some StreetAtlas format route waypoints from being uploaded properly to Garmin GPS units. The problem occurs when the route waypoints have names less than 6 characters long.
Renaming the route waypoints so that they are six characters long (from STOP1 to STOP01, for example) solves the problem. We tracked the bug and have fixed it in GPSy 3.17.
Copyright (C) 1997-2007 by Global Mapping Systems and Karen Nakamura. All rights reserved. GPSy® and GPSy.COM® are registered trademarks and GPSy ProTM and GPSyLinkTM are trademarks of Karen Nakamura. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Mention of a third-party's product does not represent endorsement of or by that product.
This page was last updated on March 11, 1999.
We've had hits since May 27, 1998.