The saying is that bad things happen in threes. I certainly hope so, because I've had three to last a while. Maybe they'll make you feel better about whatever's bugging you. In mid-March we had a strong local windstorm that actually snapped off the piling that secures my boathouse and my neighour's on one side. As a result, his house crushed mine against the one on the other side to the extent of $7 BU's of damage. The three pieces of good news were that the boat was completely unscathed, the damage was so well repaired that the house is truly better than it was, and I had insurance that covered the costs. Not too bad in the end. Last week-end, while driving home from a pleasant few hours on the boat, the head on my sports car cracked, oil and coolant mixed, and a lot of damage was done to bearings. The replacement engine arrived today and will be installed early next week. Cost will be 4-5 BU's. The power train warranty ran out a few months ago. Darn. Or something like that. The third bad thing is just continuing aggravation but with a promising outcome. You might recall that I've been experimenting with an iPAQ-based navigation system. Next time I'll buy a package rather than components. The first GPS I bought for it was the Navman. Designed specifically for the iPAQ, it's very elegant, but performance wasn't nearly what I expected so I returned it. (Arild has a similar setup on test, and is much happier with his, so it might be that I just got a marginal unit.) Since all I need is basic position data, I then bought en eTREX which performs very well using my laptop, but doesn't have a connection to the iPAQ. No problem. (Ha ha!) Found a company in Massachusetts that sells the 22 pin iPAQ connectors and bought some. Also bought a bare-end cable for the Garmin from another supplier. The connectors arrived within a few days, and it was immediately obvious that the pins are so tightly packed I wouldn't even attempt the soldering job - heck, I could hardly differentiate them. I decided to take everything into the electronics shop and have them do it Meantime, I asked Compaq for the pinout info, and that proved to be a real trial involving phone calls and e-mails. A good guy in Support finally pointed me to the Compaq Developers website where I eventually located and downloaded several data sheets showing the construction of the connector and the necessary pinout info. But not quite. Arrived at the electronics shop to realize I'd left the data sheets at home. Went home to get them and returned to the shop. The tech noted that none of the info indicates which pin is number one. Went home, and got that from the connector supplier. Also got the Garmin wiring from the Garmin website. Back to the shop, but they were too busy to do it while I waited. Went back this morning, and they did the job, but it didn't work. The tech thinks that a couple of cross-over connections are also required, but he didn't want to risk damaging the iPAQ without more info. Returned home and on the web, found a DB9 serial cable specifically stated to be used to connect a GPS or other serial devices to the iPAQ 3800. Compaq doesn't offer one yet. When it arrives next week, I'll solder a mating connector to the Garmin cable and see if that works. Will let you know. Have a great week-end. I intend to. Cheers, Garrett