Hugh Westacott wrote (see)

The next puzzle I have solve is the model number of the interface cable I require. Some seem to cost about £45.00 but others no more than a few pounds. The site you mentioned gives lots of information about cables but it's all Greek to me. Can you advise, plese? 

Hugh, do you know whether your Mac has a serial port? If it does then this cable should do the job for you

http://gpsbitz.co.uk/shop/index.php?act=viewProd&productId=2

When you see the picture on that link, the bottom connector would need to plug into your Mac and the one above it connects to the Geko (I have a 201 too). 

If your Mac only has USB portsthen you could also get a serial-to-usb cable to add to that one but it would push the overall cost up. 

I dug out the USB Garmin lead, the Garmin Windows USB serial driver CD and downloaded my GPS tracklogs to the XP VM on my iMac this morning. Kewl stuff and very handy.

'Tracklogs', an MPEG DVD authoring application and an excellent Chess program are the only reasons for using VM Fusion on my iMac.

You may want to explore Google Earth, it appears that you could mark out a route (path in google speak) then save it as a kml file.

 However, you may also want to look at Route Buddy as it is a Mac program and does allow you to import from google earth. I intend to explore these ideas myself in the coming weeks as I do not heve the luxury of buying a program with maps, such as Memory Map.

rogerb

<> I'm such a pathetic technophobe that I'd be grateful if you would keep me informed of the results of your researches.

Hi all,

Long time reader, first time posting.

This thread caught my eye as for a long time I’ve been a frustrated by the lack of Mac support from Garmin.

I have one of the first 12” G4 aluminium Powerbooks and a Garmin GPS Map60CS. Until Sunday I was keeping a very old PC purely to transfer maps, waypoints and routes to my GPS and vice versa.

Last weekend I did the Welsh 3000s. When I got home and switched on the PC to transfer my lovely track log the thing wouldn’t even start.

Many thanks to Martin Barry who posted the link to the Garmin Mac OSX progress page earlier in this thread:

http://www8.garmin.com/macosx/

After reading the descriptions of the Mac compatible programs I downloaded the webupdater to update the GPS software direct from the Mac, and Project: Bobcat.

Project Bobcat appears to be very similar to Garmin Trip and Waypoint manager, and on the Mac you don’t have the hassles of having to install USB drivers for your GPS. It picked up my Map60CS immediately (GPS connected to Mac via USB cable supplied with unit and switched on before opening Project: Bobcat). I was able to transfer all of my track logs to the Mac with no problems.

I have yet to try the Webupdater. However, now I have the data safely off my GPS I will try to update the unit software directly from the Mac.

I have a copy of Garmin TOPO GB, which I intend to try to convert for use on the Mac using Mapconverter for Windows on my office PC. This is also available to download from the Garmin website. Details are on the Project: Bobcat page and include a PDF document detailing the conversion process:

http://www8.garmin.com/support/download_details.jsp?id=3885

This may work for all Garmin Mapping products. I get the impression that once the mapping has been converted Project: Bobcat will be able to copy it to the GPS and work with it in a similar way to the way Trip and Waypoint manager does with the Garmin TOPO and Roads and Recreation mapping products.

All of the downloads from Garmin mentioned above are free and have no fixed time trial periods as far as I can see. Most are Beta versions. I have not encountered any problems but please note the warnings and use with caution.