... or any other PDA for that matter!

I´ve been struggling for the last few days with this little gadget I bougth: Spectec SDG-810 ( GPS Receiver ). It seemed to be such a good idea, you know, a GPS receiver that can be plugged in the SD socket, which carries a microSD reader, so that you don´t have to loose storing capacity. Great!

But there are a few glitches to say the least, so I would suggest all of you, deceived SDG-810 buyers, to use this thread to gather every problems and suggestions that might fix them.
Maybe we could also send these complaints to SPECTEC.

That said, let me start with my own experience (I own a Dell Axim X30 624mhz):

1. First of all: SDG-810 does not work with X3i, no matter what Spectec site says ( GPS Receiver ). This is because SDG-810 needs Pocket PC2003SE at least, and X3´s OS is Pocket PC 2002 or 2003 (not Second Edition).
From my experience (i also own a X3i), it doesn´t even recognize the MicroSD card. I believe this is because PPC 2003 doesn´t meet SDIO standards.

2. Setting it up
It´s easy. I recommend you to get the latest drivers on the Spectec site.
Test with "GPS Viewer" or "GPS Tweak".
Important: The driver assigns a COM port to the SDG-810. In my case it is COM6. But that´s not all. You have to figure out which baud rate it works with. In my case it is 38400 but that may be different between different GPS receivers. Remember to choose the NMEA protocol.

3. Fixing on to satellites. This is a very common complaint: "I can´t get my SDG-810 to fix on satellites". There are even cases where people have replaced their units, but nothing new happened. Why? Because there was nothing wrong with them in the first place!
From a cold start, it takes as much as 5 to 10 minutes to get a fix! So, go out in the sun, and be patient. After that first fix, things start to be quicker.

4. Real life experience: SDG-810 and GPS navigation software. These are the really important issues.
I tried two software: Destinator and Tomtom

Destinator: Couldn´t get it to work with SDG-810. Destinator installs ok, and it even lets me choose COM6, 38400bauds, NMEA, everything. But when it tries to connect, nothing happends. I tried it over and over again, with the same results.
I remembered to test the connection with GPS Tweak. Before running Navigator, GPS tweak connects ok. After running Navigator (with no success), I go back to GPS Tweak, and then it gives me an error message when trying to connect: "couldn´t open com port".
My guess is, and it´s just a guess, the SPECTEC driver creates a virtual COM port, while Navigator tries to access a physical COM port directly. The result is no good!

Tomtom:
This one connects ok. Recognizes the GPS receiver, fixes on to sattellites, etc. Cool, right? Not so fast.
Navigating a map is extremely slow! I mean, maps are stored in the MicroSD card, and when both things in SDG-810 are in use (the GPS receiver and the MicroSD card), the access speed to the MicroSD card gets very, very slow. The result is that the map shown on the screen is allways behind your real position.
Once again, my guess is that both the GPS receiver and the microSD card share the same resources on the Pocket PC, so that when they are both working at the same time, they conflict with each other.
Now, I found a way to go around this problem, at least for a while. Before running Tomtom, I run GPS Viewer and force a cold start. I immediately close the GPS Viewer, and run Tomtom. For a while (20 minutes or so), everything works just fine. But only for a while.


My conclusion is that, in the hardware point of view, this Spectec SDG-810 is pretty much impressive. The real fault, i believe, is software, meaning drivers. Drivers are poorly written and need to be re-programmed.
SPECTEC should do just that, and then run extensive testing with the most popular GPS software, before they sell their product.
This could have been a little wonder. Instead, and until now, it´s nothing but fancy rubbish.

Ok, I have news about this. I managed to get the SDG-810 to work properly on Tomtom 6.
As I mentioned before, the main problem with Tomtom was the painfully low access speed to the maps. When driving, my car´s position in the screen would always lag behind my real position (even though the voice directions were right), and the picture would advance in "bumps".

I found out 3 sollutions that complement each other:
1. I formated the SD card in FAT32 (it was in FAT16);
2. Then, I increased the size of the MicroSD card cache. I mean, the OS reads the data in the card in 16kbytes chunks by default, and I increased it to 256kbytes. I used Memaid to do so (menu "jump to"+"Tweaks"+"System tweaks"+"SD/MMC Transfer". I´m sure there are other methods to do it, but I used this one.

After these two operations Tomtom started to act normally! I used it in a 1400km trip and It worked pretty fine.

3. A few days ago, I discovered something new, which confirmed that the bottleneck was, in fact, not the SDG-810 itself, but the microSD card it is bundled with. I know this because I just bought a new 2gb Sandisk MicroSD card, and this one works much faster (reading and writing data) than the other one.
There is only one detail within Tomtom software where I feel things could still be a little faster, which is when I choose a destination by entering the address´s name in the keyboard. It is still a bit slow to go through the database, but even so it is much faster than it was before.

Bottom line: with a decent microSD card, SDG-810 works fine with Tomtom.

I have no news about other GPS software because I can´t afford to buy them all, of course, but your opinions are always welcome.

Hey Axxantis, thanks for posting this. I got mine at about the same time as you made your first post, and I've also been having a lot of problems.

I had an rx1950 PDA, and unfortunately it's not up to the speeds of your nice 624mhz machine. I found my SDG-810 went to Com4 384000 baud. Some of what you say though was quite similar to what I was experiencing. I had no problems accessing the maps, planning trips or doing anything else with TomTom 6, until I actually tried to use the GPS. As soon as I set it to the SpecTec driver the whole thing would work for about 5 seconds before it would practically lock up. Things still responded, but very very sluggishly, taking a minute or two to complete 1 key press. And as soon as you set TomTom to use that driver it does it on start up every other time, so you only have a few seconds to disable the GPS before it freezes if you're using the maps from the mini-SD card with the GPS attached, plan out the route and then re-enable the GPS and start going. It will then advance in fits and starts and go very slow in general.

I tried installing TomTom 5 as well, but with the same exact symptoms. iGuidance unfortunately crashes everytime I try to use it, probably because of the lack of memory. I was able to find that Mapopolis mostly works, but it has serious lag on the SD card until you set it to 'load maps into memory' after which point searchs go down from 2 minutes each to about 2 seconds. The maps are very old, 2 years for the latest ones, and the interface is not car friendly - it does not have slant view either and they don't let people buy any maps that they do have that are for other places now. It really seems like the SD or Micro-SD card are the lag points. Wififofum also seems to lag with the GPS enabled.

I've been using TCPMP with this PDA since I got it with no lag though, but I don't know if that really means anything. I tried to do as you suggested, I upgraded my MemMaid from version 1.2 to 2.0 just to get that 'SD/MMC Transfer' tweak setting, but unfortunately its greyed out set at 64kb . I tried reformatting the microSD to FAT32 but it also seemed to have no effect.

The microSD card I have is a Kingston 2GB one I bought seperately just for this GPS adapter.

So in summary with TomTom 5/6 its impossibly slow with GPS enabled, works great without it when doing demos or any other functions, once its enabled the entire program lags (like 1 second = 1 minute) including the menus. As soon as I select 'SPECTEC GPS DRIVER' in the NMEA GPS selector in TomTom, I'm screwed - If I leave it on it gets very very hot on the back and the battery gets drained very quickly (same if I set the right Com port/baud rate in Wififofum) Mapopolis works, though also had SD lag which I worked around (and it has bugs since its not technically fully WM5 compliant). Installing any of the programs directly to the MicroSD seems to have even more problems.

I'm using the modified SpecTec drivers for the rx1950 and a few other PDAs from their website, "HTC Charmer PM200, Qtek S200, HP 5965, HP 1950, HP 2190, Dopod 900, ASUS p535, Treo750, DELL x30, TOSHIBA 1830" (so the same as you have I think).

This is an entry of all the things I've been trying over the past month, though I may have missed some things. It really sucks that it can't really do it, glad to hear you got yours working but if anyone has any tips or suggestions please make them it's really appreciated .

Thanks,
Peter

Guys,
I will read everything in this thread and keep searchinf for a solution to my own problem. I posted this as a reply to "Spectec", but will paste it here so you know my experience with SDG-810:

"Hi, I have bought the SPECTEC SDG-810 SDIO GPS Receiver a couple of weeks ago, installed the driver from the SPECTEC mini CD through ActiveSync on my X51v, WM5. The card seems to be working well (its green led blinks while acquiring sattellites and then goes to a steady state meaning a fix on position, even indoor). However, no software I tried is able to get data from the receiver. I tried Holux GPSVIEWER, that scans 11 COM ports e finds no GPS, as well as Vito SmartMap, that scans five COM ports and also finds nothing. I have tried "all" combinations of software and hardware COM ports under "settings / GPS". The software ports option lists GPD ports besides COM ones, what are they? I'm very sad about it, that's why I registered to Aximsite, need help...

Thank you all!"

I was hoping i could find someone that has used the 812/813. these are the same type of gps receivers, expect the connect via bluetooth. if anyone has any experience with the 812/813 and or ms mappoint, your help will be gratefully appreciated

Hi guys. I just got one of these devices for my x51v. Seems to find the sats ok but how do I find which comm port its on? I'm using tomtom6....
Thanks

[QUOTE]
" I tried to do as you suggested, I upgraded my MemMaid from version 1.2 to 2.0 just to get that 'SD/MMC Transfer' tweak setting, but unfortunately its greyed out set at 64kb"
-------------------------------
I tried this also, the SD/MMC was tweak was unavailable. I managed to change that value editing a key in the registry, using MemMaid. (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Drivers/SDCARD/ClientDrivers/Class/MMC_Class/BlockTransferSize).
I set it to 256KB, and after a soft-reset the chosen value still shows gray in MemMaid, but it´s there. Unfornatunatelly, this has not solved my problem, my SPECTEC SDIO GPS Receiver SDG-810 and my Axim X51v seem both to be working well, except none of them is aware of the other!!!!
I wonder, the driver seems to be written by some chinese guys who cannot write perfectly english at their own website, like me BTW :-) Could the cause of my problem be related with my WM5 language, PORTUGUESE? Could some expert tell me if it's possible this SPECTEC driver not be multilanguage? so dissapointted so far... I tried update to English ROM image A12, but the update wizard warned me of language not supported. Is there a way to overcome this? I've read about hexadecimal editting something...

--------------------------------------------------------
SUCCESS, SDG-810 IS WORKING FINE ON X51v AT LAST!!!
--------------------------------------------------------
Hi everybody,
I think this is the right place to post this, like an answer to the first post of this thread, which I liked so much. It's been a month now since my first post here at Aximsite. All this time I tried, week after week, to make my WM5 BrazilianPortuguese X51v (ROM version A01), purchased in late december 2005 and received in mid January 2006 through Dell of Brazil, recognize SPECTEC SDG-810 2 in 1 SDIO GPS Receiver and microSD memory card reader. (I also posted at Dell's Community, no luck there).
As time went by with no solution at all, I even thought - out of despair and being passionate for GPS - of upgrading my firmware and changing language to English, in order to get that wonderful A12 update (later I learned that this hack is currently available only to X50 machines, through risky hexadecimal editing of the heading of a file uncompressed from Dell's ROM image self-extracting zip).
Among everything I've read in Aximsite and other PDA forums, the only piece of information that I supposedly needed, without knowing it, was "COM4@38400", can you believe that? And why I spent so much time trying every combination of hardware and software COM/GPD ports and baudrate with no success? Or why no software at all was able to *LIST* "COM4: - Spectec GPS Driver" under "Port settings"? I'll be damned if I know the exact reason! I had installed a bunch of GPS apps to my Axim to no avail. I still wonder, why they didn't recognize the very original Spectec driver from the mini companion CD before, and now they do?
The fact that triggered proper working was that I started trying drivers from Spectec website other than the recommended one and suddenly, voila! I could be sure my card worked, it was not some falsificated fake product with a random timer designed to stop the LED from blinking in less than one minute to pretend lock on satellites! Nice NMEA strings started to scroll before my eyes!!!!!!!! And yes, they were not fake, in no way a fake product could guess right my home's lat-long indoors!
I wanted to know what happened so I could avoid it in the future, because I even got to install the driver meant to PPC 2003SE. I had more than one driver installed. Thus I started testing combinations of a single driver installation along with popular GPS apps. I tested ten different softwares against:
a) the original Spectec driver from the companion miniCD;
b) the respective downloaded driver from Spectec website;
c) an Indian company ARASAN driver;
d) the PPC 2003SE driver.
Between each series of tests I hard-resetted my axim just to make sure. Each step I took was written to a txt file, so I could analize it backwards, as well as tell everybody about it further. In case you're interested, please read on... or just skip to "CONCLUSIONS".
----------------------------------
step 1) I performed a hard reset;
2) I installed the card original Spectec driver from the companion mini CD (a file dated may 24, 2006 - size 63.5kB in my system). Through Activesync, needless to say. No soft resetting afterwards.

GPS VIEWER
3) I installed Holux GPS Viewer;
4) I plugged in SDG-810, and waited until the green led stopped blinking - to speed up locking on sats, I unplugged the Axim from the usb cable and extended it outside my room's window;
5) I opened GPS Viewer, set manually COM4@38400, and tapped "Open GPS"; This is where I suspect things went right - maybe this command changed something INSIDE the card itself. NMEA strings started scrolling up the screen right away!
---------------
[EDIT] The first time SDG-810 was recognized, I had drivers "a", "b" and "c" installed at the same time. Never before this GPS Viewer command "Open GPS" had had any effect, or Spectec driver been listed in other GPS apps (some apps require that you pick up just which COM *number*, say from 1 to 5 or 1 to 11. Others will show you only COM ports actually in use by identified devices). The steps I'm describing now are things I've done AFTER the card came alive, but I'm not sure about what really made it to work for the very first time. I want to stress this, because I think that was a situation impossible to re-create now with my own card. There's no way it won't be easily recognized now - like the card itself was not the same as it was before. I would like to have a brand new, untried card, to see how my system would play with it. [end of edit]
---------------
6) I tapped "Close GPS";
7) Tapped "Tools/Exit";
8) I opened GPS Viewer again - it showed default COM1 and baudrate 4800;
9) I tapped "Scan..." - It searched all COM ports and found NOTHING after "Scan completed!" How many times I did this before following instructions from the manufacturer, at every baudrate setting?
10) I looked at "Start/Settings/System/GPS" - it showed "Software port" = "None", "Hardware port" = "None", let windows "Manage GPS automatically" was checked. I left it at that and exited from "Settings".
11) I returned to GPS Viewer and changed baudrate to 38400 and tapped "Scan..." - IT FOUND NOTHING!
12) I closed scanning result report window - Set COM port to "4" and baudrate was still 38400. I just tapped "Open GPS" and NMEA strings flowed right away.
13) However, GPS Viewer didn't show correct time and date, it kept displaying "friday, july 1, 2005", the date my Axim always assumes after a HR. It didn't show lat-long either, kept displaying "Acquiring: 3D"
--------------------------
From now on I will save my english folks, if you don't understand a statement, just install the mentioned application and follow the steps, you should be able to identify "commands" and "messages". Please don't mind if I mix narration and instructions, past tense and imperative, all right?
--------------------------

GPS TWEAK
14) "Setup/Port setting"... Ports list shows "Spectec GPS Driver" at COM4 (it never had showed this before for one month's worth of trying, trust me!) Select it, set "Speed" at 38400, "GPS Protocol"=NMEA, tap OK button.
15) Tap "Setup/Connect", NMEA strings fill up the screen and keep refreshing once a second.
16) I tried to switch to Sirf mode, it never went past "Entering decoding thread", although command "Poll version" sent a "cmd 84" that got a response, followed by a acknowledgement line. Same true regarding the use of "Poll WASS/EGNOS Status", that sent a "cmd 98". This reminded me of dial-up modem manual AT commands.
17) I learned that if you don't use "Setup/Disconnect" before "Command/Swith to..." you end up with "sentence corrupt" when back in NMEA mode. Don't panic, keep calm and do it all again tapping "Disconnect" before each "Switch to" command.
18) Under "Start/Settings/System/GPS" I set hardware port to COM4@33600 (WM5 doesn't list a 38400 option). Set software port to COM3 (an apparently unassigned port).
19) I exited GPS Tweak and did a soft-reset - when back in GPS Tweak, the listing under "Port" now showed
COM4: - Dump File Transfer
COM4: - Rndis
in addition to the already present
COM4: - Spectec GPS Driver.
IT DIDN'T SHOW THIS EARLIER, and I don't think this had nothing to do with my changing of windows GPS settings. Sirf mode never went past "Entering decoding thread", and to worsen things, both "Poll" commands never got their respective responses anymore... But NMEA mode remained normal and readily available anytime.
20) I cleared both software and hardware port settings under "Start/Settings/System/GPS" and performed a SR. But GPS Tweak kept its new behavior. When in Sirf mode, Sirf sentences never ever showed up, though you can switch directly (without tapping "Disconnect") to NMEA, after tapping OK on the dialog about "GGA, GLL, GSA, GSV, RMC, VTG, MSS, User 8, User 9, User 10" parameters.
By the way, I experimented changing these according to the values suggested in the pocketgpsworld.com article "Tweaking and Testing your GPS Receiver" by Dave Burrows (quote: "What I would recommend is that you set GGA=1, GLL=0, GSA=5, GSV=5, RMC=1, VTG=1, MSS=0, User=0, User=0, User=0"). The new settings reflected on NMEA sentences like expected (the string VTG was missing, since GPS Tweak had it set to zero, and showed up.) But when you switch modes GPS Tweak resets them to its own default.

WINFAST NAVIGATOR
21) When you choose "Port settings" in WinFast Navigator, it says "Error! Couldn't find value!" You have to tap 6 times the "ok" control to get rid of the message, then the port config dialog appears. It does have an option for 38400, but under "Port" it lists only
Serial COM1:
BTUart COM5:
IrCOMM COM3:
IrDA COM2:

No deal.

GPS4PPC
22) When you tap "GPS/Connect", it lists "COM 4: Spectec GPS Driver". When you choose it, it will say "GPS is connected". Tap "ok" and nothing good happens. If you tap "GPS/Connect: port 4" it says" "error opening port: 4" and "GPS disconnected". Soft-reset, over again and same thing. I gave up.

NAVMAN GPS INFO
23) Starts with "Error Sleeve Not Attached". Correction: it doesn't start at all - tap "ok" and you're back to "Programs" window. Same thing after a SR. Is it designed to interface just with CF cards? I wonder.

POCKETGPSMAP
24) Works OK, GPS info window shows everything it should, the way it should. I need some time to create/calibrate some maps, then I will post a comment about it.

MOVMAP
25) I really like this simple movingmap freeware, I have easily calibrated some maps and successfully loaded them to it. Unfortunately, it doesn't support 38400 bauds, there's no option between 19200 and 57600. Sirf support is neither present nor really needed. Would be nice if the author added the 38400 option.

GPSDASH (shareware tested)
26) Works OK, but wait... read further.

COMPEPOCKET-LAND 2.1 (demo tested)
27) Works OK.

TOMTOM (ttgps206_arm.CAB - not a recent version for sure.)
28) Lists Spectec driver all right, but runs extremely slo-o-o-o-w, I couldn't wait and did SR! I increased the registry key "BlockTransferSize" value from 64 to 256KB (SD/MMC related), having read about it in the 2nd post of this thread, but Tomtom kept waisting my time, and crashes as soon as you tap and hold anything looking for unknown options. I must say it does show lat-long and signaltrength, but numbers don't update. I can't say if it would work ok if a microSD card was present. Remember to select "NMEA 0183v2 38400" from the dropdown list.

VITO SMARTMAP v 3.54 (14 days trial)
29) It's the only software I used on hiking before on my Axim X51v (WM5 Brazilian Portuguese, January2006). It worked well with a bluetooth GPS ( a "mouse" one, not a BT/SD card like Spectec SDG-812). Unfortunately, SmartMap doesn't have the 38400 bauds option, the closest one (33600) does not work. It does scan ports one to five (actually in reverse order), but when it reaches port 4 scanning freezes, though the Axim remains functional. I shall see if there's a newer version that supports 38400. By the way, WM5 GPS Settings don't support it too, otherwise maybe automatic GPS management could fool SmartMap3.54 into vacant COM3. I'll never know if this really works, unless Spectec come up with a driver that assigns SDG-810 to a COM listed in windows (and a windows standard baudrate).

***********2nd HARD RESET***********

30) After performing a second HARDreset, I installed the driver downloaded from Spectec webpage (sdg810-driver-for-750.rar). Believe me, I repeated the exact procedures above, for all softwares, in the same order, and the only difference was that Vito SmartMap didn't freeze when scanning - it tried port 4, found nothing, and just went on. Probably it could've been like this before, had I performed a softreset.

*********3rd HARD RESET***********

31) After a 3rd HR, I installed the ARASAN SDIO UART driver, a file also named "Spectec-GPS.exe" and also packed as "Spectec-GPS.rar". Its uncompressed size is 727KB, instead of just 63.5KB of the driver from the miniCD.

GPSVIEWER
32) It worked almost the same way as before (COM4@38400, NMEA strings, bargraph of signalstrength, no reading of lat-long nor time and date), but this time it crashed in less than one minute, "problem with the mGpsCmd.exe", said a standard windows error report (Would you be kind enough to send this error report to MS?). Now GPSViewer will auto shut-off randomly very often, or crash when you switch from "Setup" to "GPS Status" and viceversa.

GPS TWEAK
33) Same as before, it displays "COM4: - Spectec GPS Driver", BUT THERE IS NEWS: when you "Poll version", it now does get the answer I mentioned earlier, "SiRF: SW Ver: GSW3.2.4Pat2_3.1.00" plus 3 little "squares" (unknown characters), followed by "SiRF: Command 84 Ack".
And as an answer to "Poll WAAS/EGNOS Status" it gets:
SiRF: DGPS Poll response
Source: WAAS/EGNOS
Mode: 00
Timeout: 18sec
SiRF: Command 98 Ack
If you try "Setup/Disconnect" and "Port settings" to switch to NMEA, sentences scroll up just saying "NMEA: No leading $", "NMEA: Corrupt sentence". You have to switch modes through "Command" to be successfully back to NMEA. Like before, the option "Signal strength" doesn't work.

WINFAST NAVIGATOR
34) Same as before, it does not recognize the Spectec driver.

GPS4PPC
35) This time it took a little longer to load, and loading it now always lingers. It listed "COM 4: Spectec GPS Driver" like before and didn't work, as before. I then remembered to softreset, and did so without closing GPS4PPC nor unplugging the card. After the Axim restarted, WM5 greeted me with "Unrecognized card". Just to make sure, I ran GPS Viewer and it didn't work anymore. GPS Tweak didn't list the Spectec driver anymore either.
I unplugged the card and SR'ed again, plugged the card back, it locked on sats immediately. GPS Viewer worked again for some seconds until I switched to "GPS Status" and got a crash and a error report like usual. Uff... so relieved! At this point I was afraid these apps messed with card's firmware, like DVD player Region code hacking. GPS Tweak scrolled NMEA sentences again. OK, go on testing the remaining apps against the ARASAN driver.

NAVMAN GPS INFO
36) "Error Sleeve Not Attached" as before.

POCKETGPSMAP
37) Works GREAT like before. And like MOVMAP, there's no install, no wizard, no CAB - you just copy the executable file plus the Atlas folder to anywhere via activesync and run it from there. Keep it simple guys, thank you Andrej Krutak!

MOVMAP
37) No 38400 bauds option, remember? This must be easy for the author to fix.

GPSDASH (shareware tested)
38) I didn't test it with the ARASAN driver, it has an irritating shareware limit of just 50KB, not enough to feel how it behaves for more than a little second. I DELETED it with no regrets.

COMPEPOCKET-LAND 2.1 (demo tested, 500KB limitation)
39) Works OK just like before, no softreset needed after install. It has an option to SiRF protocol, but when I try to select it, it says "Error, received data is not SIRF protocol!" I'm not sure if I have to use some specific tweak app to change the card "itself" to SIRF, could somebody please tell me?

TOMTOM (ttgps206_arm.CAB)
40) Same sluggishness, such that you are led to think the axim has entirely crashed, but that's not the case. Listen to "Patience" from Guns'n'Roses and don't worry, be happy. This time I didn't bother to do the SD/MMC 64K to 256K BlockTransferSize registry tweak. What for?

VITO SMARTMAP v 3.54 (14 days trial)
41) Same as before.

****4th HARDRESET - driver meant to PPC 2003SE****

42) After a fourth HR I installed the driver meant to PPC 2003SE, not the one from the miniCD, but the one downloaded from Spectec site, "general_sdio.CAB", only 25KB. (I can't see why the folder "GPS for PPC2003" on the miniCD has 13 different files summing up to 7,7MB).

GPS VIEWER
43) No SR was needed, GPS Viewer worked like before. When I switched from "Setup" to "GPS status" and viceversa the screens corrupted, then after a w-h-i-l-e they were restored. The app didn't crash like it used to (when using the ARASAN driver). Instead, it began to behave like Tomtom. I turned off the axim, unplugged the card and did a SR. Plugged the card back and ordered GPS Viewer to scan ports at 38400. Scan completed fast as usual, nothing found as always.

GPS TWEAK
44) Just like before, BUT the "Poll" commands are functional. Must I wait forever when SiRF enters decoding threads?

WINFAST NAVIGATOR
45) Just like before, no deal.

GPS4PPC
46) Same nothing. Just lists the Spectec driver.

NAVMAN GPS INFO
47) "Sleeve not attached".

POCKETGPSMAP
48) This time a message told me "couldn't open //COM4", but it was caused by garbage left by previous apps for sure - a SR (card unplugged first) solved the problem and PocketGPSMap ran smoothly.

MOVMAP
49) No 38400 bauds option.

COMPEPOCKET-LAND 2.1 (demo tested, 500KB limitation)
50) Just like before, no more, no less.

TOMTOM (ttgps206_arm.CAB)
51) I tell you it pays to be methodical! During these two days risking the integrity of my softreset button membrane, I almost ran out of patience about Tomtom, I was really tempted to skip running it with the PPC 2003SE driver!
Great news about it, maybe it doesn't mean so much once Tomtom seems to be a software with many evolving versions, and this one I tried is pretty basic. But it runs lightning fast with the 2003SE driver!
No BlockTransferSize nor microSD memory card present needed. Signal strengh bars, lat-long numbers, speed and direction fields update fairly well at every 1 to 2 seconds, you can switch between Tomtom screens and change options with no lag at all. But...
As long as you don't tap the "x" control, meant to minimize the window. This control now actually kills Tomtom, it is wiped from memory, at least becomes invisible both through "Start/Settings/Memory" and the Switch Bar (is it named like this in english?) Just re-open tomtom from "recent programs" Start menu and it's up and running, no re-config needed, just go on navigating.

VITO SMARTMAP v 3.54 (14 days trial)
52) No 38400 option. I will look for a newer version. BTW I want to apologize, several install files used in these procedures I downloaded a lot of months ago, long before I bought the SDG-810 - some of them may just be out of date.
--------------
CONCLUSIONS
--------------
The Spectec SDG-810 original driver from the companion mini CD works all right, but not at first. The reason why is not clear, it is as if something inside the card itself needs to be changed by some tweak app using the ARASAN driver. Then this one can be uninstalled, and the original driver from the mini CD will be recognized and listed by most of GPS apps at "Port settings". In order we can confirm this, it's important all of you having a hard time with SDG-810 mark your present situation BEFORE trying the ARASAN driver. This will help device driver writers improve SDG-810 functionality.
The driver meant for PPC 2003SE works just fine on a X51v running WM5. In the end, if you use WM5, it is a question of determining what driver works best with your particular application. And remember, you don't have really to perform hardresets, you can just uninstall any version of the Spectec driver through the option "Remove programs" under "Start/Settings/System".
----------------------
[EDIT] Now WM5 will pop up "Unrecognized card" whenever I uninstall the card driver (or do a hard reset) and then plug the card in. This wouldn't happen before the first time the card was recognized. Everytime I inserted SDG-810 in the axim before, its LED lighted indicating power consumption, but it was as if no communication at all took place. Now it's different, after a HR or driver uninstall, WM5 accuses the presence of something new in the system when the card is inserted.
-----------------------
A PIECE OF ADVICE: Never remove the card in a single move (just holding it and pulling it out of axim). You should always push it inwards, like it´s a SD memory card, in order to unlock it, only then pull it out. I mean, you can remove it just by pulling, but eventually you will disarrange the locking mechanism, as I did this week. The cards will not lock in place anymore, the SD slot spring will force them outwards. Too bad... I managed to somehow disable my spring, now I can insert SDG-810 (or an ordinary SD memory card) and it will not fall if I turn the axim upside down, and even shake it... Both SDG and the memory card still hold in place and work well, but I fear this will not last forever, so be warned.

hi i have installed tomtom navigator 6 using the spectec sdg-810 it is on the micro SD but it is really slow CAN ANONE PLEASE HELP I WOULD REEEEEAAAAAALLLLLLLYYYYYYYY APPRECIATE IT

thanks

Hi cmort,
I have never installed tomtom navigator version 6, but I suggest you just try something harmless and please give us a feedback about it: uninstall the spectec driver and install the driver meant for PPC 2003SE. Just give it a try...

i just tried it no good have you got any other suggestions or does anyone i really need help

Thanks Silas for your post, that thing is massive, I'll definitely read it all over and see .

I actually thought I posted more here, but it turns out I got into a Private Message thread with Axxantis the guy who started this thread originally, along with the guy at Spectec, and never got around to posting publically.

I tried a bunch more things, and I actually killed my card pretty much. I managed to reset it by using GPS Tweak I believe and doing about 10 Hard Resets. Somehow I figured out how with that software to RESET TO FACTORY DEFAULTS on the actual card, there were tons of warnings that it might wreck the card but I did it and it finally fixed it. I'd broken it by changing it to Sirf and then exiting the program without resetting to NMEA and lost all the settings. After that I haven't tried messing with it for fear of losing it all.

Here though is a set of correspondence between me and the first poster, as well as with Spectec's Tech Support guy:





Originally Posted by pjpeter
Re: SDG-810
Never mind that last bit - thanks .

I did a Factory Reset with some SW and got it back tothe original state, now it works just as well as before. My PDA actually works even faster now since I downgraded to an older ROM file. Unfortunately TomTom is still screwed but I was in contact with SpecTec support and he told me they are working on a new driver for it and they'll keep me updated. So it all looks good .

If you have any suggestions though, please do send

Thanks,
Peter


Originally Posted by pjpeter
Thanks man for replying, I made a big post as well replying to you .

After reading the manual I found the GPS Tweak info and decided to give it a shot. I didn't realize it can override your original settings if you aren't careful and now I'm screwed . Holux GPS Viewer no longer picks up the GPS by default and Mapopolis Auto-Rotate doesn't work making it much more difficult to use the software.

Do you know what the defaults are on yours? I know its 38400 baud, but do you know by any chance the other settings? Like:
GGA = 1 GLL = 0 GSA = 1 GSV = 5 RMC = 1 VTG = 1 MSS = 0 User 8 = 0 User 9 = 0 User 10 = 0

For example. I'm going mad trying to fix this now driving me nuts, if you can help it'd be greatly appreciated .

Thanks man ,
Peter


Originally Posted by Axxantis

Originally Posted by pjpeter
Hey man, how are you doing?

I also bought an SDG-810, and I think I recieved it about the same day you made that post. It seemed pretty good at first, but I've done many hard resets and installed a bunch of different programs to try to get it to work. I've actually got 1 program at the moment which seems to work ok, have you had any luck yourself?

Peter

Hi, I just posted some more information at the forum that might help you.
I am currently using Tomtom6 with success, after a saga of tweaking!
What GPS program are you working with?

Best regards,
Axxantis

-------------------

Dear Peter,

Thanks for your fast feedback, we are currently under the analyzing process, will
update you when we have made progress.

　
Best Regards


henry Field Application Engineer

SPECTEC COMPUTER CO., LTD. 　

MSN: henry-fae@hotmail.com TEL: +886-2-2753-2953

6F, No. 92, Nan King E. Rd. Sec-5, Taipei, Taiwan FAX: +886-2-2753-2949

　 SPECTEC CO.,LTD. --- THE SPECIALIST MANUFACTURER OF SDIO DEVICES 　 　

----- Original Message -----
From: Peter
To: 'henry'
Sent: Wednesday, December 05, 2007 12:36 PM
Subject: RE: TomTom 5/6 Very Slow on rx1950 with SDG-810


Hello Henry,

With the new driver I managed to get the device to 9600 and 4800, at those two settings TomTom would say that it was 'Waiting for valid GPS Signal' and also sometimes say 'No GPS Device.' I was not able to get a fix through the program on either of these settings and the program seemed to be very slow at some points, and normal at others. With 38400 though, I am able to get a signal. The way I connect through 38400 is to very quickly upon starting the program go to the GPS settings and turn it to some incorrect setting, such as 4800 with Spectec SDIO Driver, or Com 3 for instance. Then when the program is running normally I change it back to the correct 38400 baud setting, and the GPS Lock and data become visible in TomTom. Occasionally the program will even start to track my movement. The program is very slow, however, and whenever I try to do anything more, however, such as going through the menus to navigate somewhere the program becomes extremely sluggish and will take 1 or 2 minutes to respond to a keystroke. It also seems to freeze up for 5 minutes sometimes. It doesn't seem to get better until I eject the SDG-810 or do a soft reset of the device.

I tried your suggestion to improve the SD performance, including formatting the mini-sd card to FAT32. I attempted again to change the MicroSD Card Cache, but was unable to do so in MemMaid 2 as I was advised previously. How do you do the change on your rx1950 device? I have changed the firmware on my device to an older version to try to fix the problem, and the SD is faster now with this other version, but it doesn't seem to help much in TomTom when using the SDG-810.

Please see my reply at http://www.aximsite.com/boards/gps-t...-axim-x30.html I am the pjpeter in that post, I sent that out at about the same time I first contacted you last week.

Thanks very much,

Peter



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: henry [mailto:henry@spectec.com.tw]
Sent: Tuesday, December 04, 2007 8:22 PM
To: Peter
Subject: Fw: TomTom 5/6 Very Slow on rx1950 with SDG-810
Importance: High


Dear Peter,

Here are 2 steps to improve SDG-810 performance:

1. I formated the SD card in FAT32 (it was in FAT16);
2. Then, increased the size of the MicroSD card cache. I mean, the OS reads the data in the card in 16kbytes chunks by default,
and please increased it to 256kbytes.

Please try it, and let me know the result.


　

Best Regards


henry Field Application Engineer

SPECTEC COMPUTER CO., LTD. 　

MSN: henry-fae@hotmail.com TEL: +886-2-2753-2953

6F, No. 92, Nan King E. Rd. Sec-5, Taipei, Taiwan FAX: +886-2-2753-2949

　 SPECTEC CO.,LTD. --- THE SPECIALIST MANUFACTURER OF SDIO DEVICES 　 　

----- Original Message -----
From: henry
To: Peter
Sent: Tuesday, December 04, 2007 3:41 PM
Subject: Re: TomTom 5/6 Very Slow on rx1950 with SDG-810


Dear Peter,

Please have a try on the new SDG-810 driver by a lower baud rate (like 9600),
and see if the same observations come.
　

Best Regards


henry Field Application Engineer

SPECTEC COMPUTER CO., LTD. 　

MSN: henry-fae@hotmail.com TEL: +886-2-2753-2953

6F, No. 92, Nan King E. Rd. Sec-5, Taipei, Taiwan FAX: +886-2-2753-2949

　 SPECTEC CO.,LTD. --- THE SPECIALIST MANUFACTURER OF SDIO DEVICES 　 　

----- Original Message -----
From: Peter
To: 'henry'
Sent: Tuesday, December 04, 2007 2:52 PM
Subject: RE: TomTom 5/6 Very Slow on rx1950 with SDG-810


Hello Henry,

One other quick update, I was able to get the TomTom software to eventually update the status when the GPS unit had a lock so that it would display the correct Latitude and Longitude and knew where I was on the map (as it would do before). However, while connected the program was as sluggish as before taking 1 or 2 minutes to respond to any command, and it continues to show 'No GPS Device' rather than 'Connection Lost' or some other message as it should give when the device (the SDG-810) is still in the PDA. Even after exiting the TomTom GPS status screen it continues to act sluggishly, whether the SDG-810 is blinking or not, taking up to 5 minutes or more to respond to a screen tap.

Thanks,
Peter



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Peter [mailtojpeter@rogers.com]
Sent: Tuesday, December 04, 2007 1:04 AM
To: 'henry'
Subject: RE: TomTom 5/6 Very Slow on rx1950 with SDG-810


Hello Henry,

Thanks for sending this along to me. Here are the steps I followed:

I installed the sdg810_1204_p.cab file you sent me, expecting that it would ask to replace the SPECTEC GPS Driver already installed, but it did not. So after getting the same response as previously from the applications I uninstalled the old Spectec driver. Then when I reconnected the card I got an 'Unrecognized card' message so I reinstalled the driver. After this I was getting slighly more speedy response from TomTom except when I clicked to go to 'GPS Status' when it would freeze for a minute, and then resume when the screen was entered. But there was no GPS info there and it continues to say 'No GPS device'

I realized that the Aurea SDUART driver from the website was also installed (the standard driver, I had installed it as well as the rx1950 specific one to see if it helped me connect, which it did not). I uninstalled this and once again got the 'Unrecognized card' message on reconnecting my SDG-810 so I reinstalled the new driver you gave me and I was then able to access GPS as before with Mapopolis and GPS Viewer. Once opening TomTom and setting it to the new SpecTec SDIO Driver though it would still would not say anything but 'No GPS device' so I uninstalled the program and did a Soft Reset. Other programs still work, but TomTom won't connect and it still reacts sluggishly in the menus after the GPS is selected (and all other times the program is opened after that point, since it remembers it), even right after a soft reset without opening any other programs. As soon as I eject the SDG-810 from the SD card slot though, the prorgam instantly starts to respond. I haven't been able to get it to find my location with this driver though.

Is this expected behaviour with this test driver? Should I follow some other steps or do a hard reset?

Thanks,
Peter



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: henry [mailto:henry@spectec.com.tw]
Sent: Tuesday, December 04, 2007 12:14 AM
To: Peter
Subject: Fw: TomTom 5/6 Very Slow on rx1950 with SDG-810
Importance: High


Dear Peter,

We have done some correction upon SDG-810 driver and here I add it into the
attachment for your reference, please have a try upon it on your PDA, It will be
very appreciated if you can be so kindly and update me the test result for the
documentation work at our side.
　

Best Regards


henry Field Application Engineer

SPECTEC COMPUTER CO., LTD. 　

MSN: henry-fae@hotmail.com TEL: +886-2-2753-2953

6F, No. 92, Nan King E. Rd. Sec-5, Taipei, Taiwan FAX: +886-2-2753-2949

　 SPECTEC CO.,LTD. --- THE SPECIALIST MANUFACTURER OF SDIO DEVICES 　 　

----- Original Message -----
From: henry
To: Peter
Sent: Friday, November 30, 2007 9:24 AM
Subject: Re: TomTom 5/6 Very Slow on rx1950 with SDG-810


Dear Peter,

We are now looking into the SDG-810 driver according to the respondsn from customers,
thank you for giving details on what all behaviour you see with Tom Tom. we will update
you the revised driver when we work it out, please never hesitate update me other details should
you find in using SDG-810.

thank you very much & best regards
henry
SPECTEC COMPUTER CO., LTD.
MSN contact: henry-fae@hotmail.com



----- Original Message -----
From: Peter
To: 'henry'
Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2007 2:58 AM
Subject: RE: TomTom 5/6 Very Slow on rx1950 with SDG-810


Hello Henry,

Thank you for replying. I have not contacted you previously, but I have read over the SpecTec discussion forums and i have a problem similar to what Russia wrote on the forum, but did not seem to get a reply to there:

SPECTEC DISCUSS FORUM
"Hello.
I alsi have HP 1950 and sdg-810 devices.
Initially it was very slow (in a tom tom searching of a city requre 20-30 secomnd for each letter), and now it almost not connecting to satellites...
How to fix this? "

I had a similar experience with TomTom 5.21 and TomTom 6.75. In both cases the programs worked very fast with the micro-sd and Spectec SDG810 installed in it, but with the GPS not setup. But once I set it to NMEA-38400baud-Com4 "Spectec GPS Driver" the program would almost instantly go very very slowly. I found that if I ejected the SD card things on the screen would refresh and the program would show my current location, but then a few seconds later it would go back to 'No GPS Found' and when I reconnected the card again the program would be just as slow. The status does not refresh often if at all and it often hangs once the driver is selected. It was as if it was getting all the GPS data and couldn't sort through it until it stopped, maybe it was getting it too fast or it was doing the wrong thing with it or something. The pda would get very hot, as though in some sort of infinite loop maybe, or doing processes without being able to accomplish anything. I also tried with Wififofum which is a free program for finding Wifi signals and triangulating them with GPS and it would also crash/go very very slowly with the rx1950 and SDG-810 as soon as I enabled the GPS and set it properly to the SDG810 port.

I found that Mapopolis did work, though it is a very old program which is no longer supported and has maps 2 years out of date.

I am using my Spectec SDG810 with a Kingston 2GB micro-SD card. The driver I am using is modified SpecTec drivers for the rx1950 and a few other PDAs from the website, "HTC Charmer PM200, Qtek S200, HP 5965, HP 1950, HP 2190, Dopod 900, ASUS p535, Treo750, DELL x30, TOSHIBA 1830."

I have tried doing two hard resets and just installing the SDG-810 driver (and general-sdio.cab driver so I can access the micro-sd card) and the TomTom software without any boost in performance.

I tried with GPS Tweak and GPS Finder and confirmed that Com4, 38400 is correct and they do show lots of GPS words when turned on and GPS Finder is able to lock onto Satellites. It's the big programs such as TomTom using the micro-sd memory to access maps which seem to have problems, or which the programs which run off of the card. Maybe it could be something to do with the gps data from the driver overwhelming the data coming from the micro-sd? I'm not sure what else to do, I'm hoping maybe you know amd maybe even you helped someone in the past with the same sort of problem so it would be easy for you.

Thanks very much,
Peter



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: henry [mailto:henry@spectec.com.tw]
Sent: Tuesday, November 27, 2007 1:54 AM
To: Peter
Subject: Re: TomTom 5/6 Very Slow on rx1950 with SDG-810


Dear Peter,

Thanks for responding question, I don't seem to had received your email before, would you please re-send your email if any,
or please provide more details regarding the usage problem of SDG-810 on your 1950.

best regards
henry
SPECTEC COMPUTER CO., LTD.
----- Original Message -----
From: Peter
To: henry@spectec.com.tw
Sent: Tuesday, November 27, 2007 12:35 PM
Subject: TomTom 5/6 Very Slow on rx1950 with SDG-810


Hello,

I've had a lot of problems trying to get the SDG-810 to work sucessfully with the rx1950 using WM5 and TomTom 5 and 6 for about a month now with no luck. I am able to use the GPS but it is very slow and the device crashes often. It does work ok with other software such as Mapopolis, but this is old and does not have new maps. I am willing to help if i can and will test drivers for you if that helps.

Thanks,
Peter

Thanks Silas for your post, that thing is massive, I'll definitely read it all over and see .

I actually thought I posted more here, but it turns out I got into a Private Message thread with Axxantis the guy who started this thread originally, along with the guy at Spectec, and never got around to posting publically.

I tried a bunch more things, and I actually killed my card pretty much. I managed to reset it by using GPS Tweak I believe and doing about 10 Hard Resets. Somehow I figured out how with that software to RESET TO FACTORY DEFAULTS on the actual card, there were tons of warnings that it might wreck the card but I did it and it finally fixed it. I'd broken it by changing it to Sirf and then exiting the program without resetting to NMEA and lost all the settings. After that I haven't tried messing with it for fear of losing it all.

Here though is a set of correspondence between me and the first poster, as well as with Spectec's Tech Support guy:





Originally Posted by pjpeter
Re: SDG-810
Never mind that last bit - thanks .

I did a Factory Reset with some SW and got it back tothe original state, now it works just as well as before. My PDA actually works even faster now since I downgraded to an older ROM file. Unfortunately TomTom is still screwed but I was in contact with SpecTec support and he told me they are working on a new driver for it and they'll keep me updated. So it all looks good .

If you have any suggestions though, please do send

Thanks,
Peter


Originally Posted by pjpeter
Thanks man for replying, I made a big post as well replying to you .

After reading the manual I found the GPS Tweak info and decided to give it a shot. I didn't realize it can override your original settings if you aren't careful and now I'm screwed . Holux GPS Viewer no longer picks up the GPS by default and Mapopolis Auto-Rotate doesn't work making it much more difficult to use the software.

Do you know what the defaults are on yours? I know its 38400 baud, but do you know by any chance the other settings? Like:
GGA = 1 GLL = 0 GSA = 1 GSV = 5 RMC = 1 VTG = 1 MSS = 0 User 8 = 0 User 9 = 0 User 10 = 0

For example. I'm going mad trying to fix this now driving me nuts, if you can help it'd be greatly appreciated .

Thanks man ,
Peter


Originally Posted by Axxantis

Originally Posted by pjpeter
Hey man, how are you doing?

I also bought an SDG-810, and I think I recieved it about the same day you made that post. It seemed pretty good at first, but I've done many hard resets and installed a bunch of different programs to try to get it to work. I've actually got 1 program at the moment which seems to work ok, have you had any luck yourself?

Peter

Hi, I just posted some more information at the forum that might help you.
I am currently using Tomtom6 with success, after a saga of tweaking!
What GPS program are you working with?

Best regards,
Axxantis

More:


Dear Peter,

Thanks for your fast feedback, we are currently under the analyzing process, will
update you when we have made progress.


Best Regards


henry Field Application Engineer

SPECTEC COMPUTER CO., LTD.

MSN: henry-fae-AT-hotmail-dot-com- TEL: +886-2-2753-2953

6F, No. 92, Nan King E. Rd. Sec-5, Taipei, Taiwan FAX: +886-2-2753-2949

http://www.spectec-dot-com-.tw

----- Original Message -----
From: Peter
To: 'henry'
Sent: Wednesday, December 05, 2007 12:36 PM
Subject: RE: TomTom 5/6 Very Slow on rx1950 with SDG-810


Hello Henry,

With the new driver I managed to get the device to 9600 and 4800, at those two settings TomTom would say that it was 'Waiting for valid GPS Signal' and also sometimes say 'No GPS Device.' I was not able to get a fix through the program on either of these settings and the program seemed to be very slow at some points, and normal at others. With 38400 though, I am able to get a signal. The way I connect through 38400 is to very quickly upon starting the program go to the GPS settings and turn it to some incorrect setting, such as 4800 with Spectec SDIO Driver, or Com 3 for instance. Then when the program is running normally I change it back to the correct 38400 baud setting, and the GPS Lock and data become visible in TomTom. Occasionally the program will even start to track my movement. The program is very slow, however, and whenever I try to do anything more, however, such as going through the menus to navigate somewhere the program becomes extremely sluggish and will take 1 or 2 minutes to respond to a keystroke. It also seems to freeze up for 5 minutes sometimes. It doesn't seem to get better until I eject the SDG-810 or do a soft reset of the device.

I tried your suggestion to improve the SD performance, including formatting the mini-sd card to FAT32. I attempted again to change the MicroSD Card Cache, but was unable to do so in MemMaid 2 as I was advised previously. How do you do the change on your rx1950 device? I have changed the firmware on my device to an older version to try to fix the problem, and the SD is faster now with this other version, but it doesn't seem to help much in TomTom when using the SDG-810.

Please see my reply at http://www.aximsite-dot-com-/boards/...-axim-x30.html I am the pjpeter in that post, I sent that out at about the same time I first contacted you last week.

Thanks very much,

Peter



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: henry [mailto:henry-AT-spectec-dot-com-.tw]
Sent: Tuesday, December 04, 2007 8:22 PM
To: Peter
Subject: Fw: TomTom 5/6 Very Slow on rx1950 with SDG-810
Importance: High


Dear Peter,

Here are 2 steps to improve SDG-810 performance:

1. I formated the SD card in FAT32 (it was in FAT16);
2. Then, increased the size of the MicroSD card cache. I mean, the OS reads the data in the card in 16kbytes chunks by default,
and please increased it to 256kbytes.

Please try it, and let me know the result.




Best Regards


henry Field Application Engineer

SPECTEC COMPUTER CO., LTD.

MSN: henry-fae-AT-hotmail-dot-com- TEL: +886-2-2753-2953

6F, No. 92, Nan King E. Rd. Sec-5, Taipei, Taiwan FAX: +886-2-2753-2949

http://www.spectec-dot-com-.tw

----- Original Message -----
From: henry
To: Peter
Sent: Tuesday, December 04, 2007 3:41 PM
Subject: Re: TomTom 5/6 Very Slow on rx1950 with SDG-810


Dear Peter,

Please have a try on the new SDG-810 driver by a lower baud rate (like 9600),
and see if the same observations come.


Best Regards


henry Field Application Engineer

SPECTEC COMPUTER CO., LTD.

MSN: henry-fae-AT-hotmail-dot-com- TEL: +886-2-2753-2953

6F, No. 92, Nan King E. Rd. Sec-5, Taipei, Taiwan FAX: +886-2-2753-2949

http://www.spectec-dot-com-.tw

----- Original Message -----
From: Peter
To: 'henry'
Sent: Tuesday, December 04, 2007 2:52 PM
Subject: RE: TomTom 5/6 Very Slow on rx1950 with SDG-810


Hello Henry,

One other quick update, I was able to get the TomTom software to eventually update the status when the GPS unit had a lock so that it would display the correct Latitude and Longitude and knew where I was on the map (as it would do before). However, while connected the program was as sluggish as before taking 1 or 2 minutes to respond to any command, and it continues to show 'No GPS Device' rather than 'Connection Lost' or some other message as it should give when the device (the SDG-810) is still in the PDA. Even after exiting the TomTom GPS status screen it continues to act sluggishly, whether the SDG-810 is blinking or not, taking up to 5 minutes or more to respond to a screen tap.

Thanks,
Peter



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Peter [mailtojpeter-AT-rogers-dot-com-]
Sent: Tuesday, December 04, 2007 1:04 AM
To: 'henry'
Subject: RE: TomTom 5/6 Very Slow on rx1950 with SDG-810


Hello Henry,

Thanks for sending this along to me. Here are the steps I followed:

I installed the sdg810_1204_p.cab file you sent me, expecting that it would ask to replace the SPECTEC GPS Driver already installed, but it did not. So after getting the same response as previously from the applications I uninstalled the old Spectec driver. Then when I reconnected the card I got an 'Unrecognized card' message so I reinstalled the driver. After this I was getting slighly more speedy response from TomTom except when I clicked to go to 'GPS Status' when it would freeze for a minute, and then resume when the screen was entered. But there was no GPS info there and it continues to say 'No GPS device'

I realized that the Aurea SDUART driver from the website was also installed (the standard driver, I had installed it as well as the rx1950 specific one to see if it helped me connect, which it did not). I uninstalled this and once again got the 'Unrecognized card' message on reconnecting my SDG-810 so I reinstalled the new driver you gave me and I was then able to access GPS as before with Mapopolis and GPS Viewer. Once opening TomTom and setting it to the new SpecTec SDIO Driver though it would still would not say anything but 'No GPS device' so I uninstalled the program and did a Soft Reset. Other programs still work, but TomTom won't connect and it still reacts sluggishly in the menus after the GPS is selected (and all other times the program is opened after that point, since it remembers it), even right after a soft reset without opening any other programs. As soon as I eject the SDG-810 from the SD card slot though, the prorgam instantly starts to respond. I haven't been able to get it to find my location with this driver though.

Is this expected behaviour with this test driver? Should I follow some other steps or do a hard reset?

Thanks,
Peter



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: henry [mailto:henry-AT-spectec-dot-com-.tw]
Sent: Tuesday, December 04, 2007 12:14 AM
To: Peter
Subject: Fw: TomTom 5/6 Very Slow on rx1950 with SDG-810
Importance: High


Dear Peter,

We have done some correction upon SDG-810 driver and here I add it into the
attachment for your reference, please have a try upon it on your PDA, It will be
very appreciated if you can be so kindly and update me the test result for the
documentation work at our side.


Best Regards


henry Field Application Engineer

SPECTEC COMPUTER CO., LTD.

MSN: henry-fae-AT-hotmail-dot-com- TEL: +886-2-2753-2953

6F, No. 92, Nan King E. Rd. Sec-5, Taipei, Taiwan FAX: +886-2-2753-2949

http://www.spectec-dot-com-.tw

----- Original Message -----
From: henry
To: Peter
Sent: Friday, November 30, 2007 9:24 AM
Subject: Re: TomTom 5/6 Very Slow on rx1950 with SDG-810


Dear Peter,

We are now looking into the SDG-810 driver according to the respondsn from customers,
thank you for giving details on what all behaviour you see with Tom Tom. we will update
you the revised driver when we work it out, please never hesitate update me other details should
you find in using SDG-810.

thank you very much & best regards
henry
SPECTEC COMPUTER CO., LTD.
MSN contact: henry-fae-AT-hotmail-dot-com-



----- Original Message -----
From: Peter
To: 'henry'
Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2007 2:58 AM
Subject: RE: TomTom 5/6 Very Slow on rx1950 with SDG-810


Hello Henry,

Thank you for replying. I have not contacted you previously, but I have read over the SpecTec discussion forums and i have a problem similar to what Russia wrote on the forum, but did not seem to get a reply to there:

http://www.spectec-dot-com-.tw/cutef...sp?main_id=129
"Hello.
I alsi have HP 1950 and sdg-810 devices.
Initially it was very slow (in a tom tom searching of a city requre 20-30 secomnd for each letter), and now it almost not connecting to satellites...
How to fix this? "

I had a similar experience with TomTom 5.21 and TomTom 6.75. In both cases the programs worked very fast with the micro-sd and Spectec SDG810 installed in it, but with the GPS not setup. But once I set it to NMEA-38400baud-Com4 "Spectec GPS Driver" the program would almost instantly go very very slowly. I found that if I ejected the SD card things on the screen would refresh and the program would show my current location, but then a few seconds later it would go back to 'No GPS Found' and when I reconnected the card again the program would be just as slow. The status does not refresh often if at all and it often hangs once the driver is selected. It was as if it was getting all the GPS data and couldn't sort through it until it stopped, maybe it was getting it too fast or it was doing the wrong thing with it or something. The pda would get very hot, as though in some sort of infinite loop maybe, or doing processes without being able to accomplish anything. I also tried with Wififofum which is a free program for finding Wifi signals and triangulating them with GPS and it would also crash/go very very slowly with the rx1950 and SDG-810 as soon as I enabled the GPS and set it properly to the SDG810 port.

I found that Mapopolis did work, though it is a very old program which is no longer supported and has maps 2 years out of date.

I am using my Spectec SDG810 with a Kingston 2GB micro-SD card. The driver I am using is modified SpecTec drivers for the rx1950 and a few other PDAs from the website, "HTC Charmer PM200, Qtek S200, HP 5965, HP 1950, HP 2190, Dopod 900, ASUS p535, Treo750, DELL x30, TOSHIBA 1830."

I have tried doing two hard resets and just installing the SDG-810 driver (and general-sdio.cab driver so I can access the micro-sd card) and the TomTom software without any boost in performance.

I tried with GPS Tweak and GPS Finder and confirmed that Com4, 38400 is correct and they do show lots of GPS words when turned on and GPS Finder is able to lock onto Satellites. It's the big programs such as TomTom using the micro-sd memory to access maps which seem to have problems, or which the programs which run off of the card. Maybe it could be something to do with the gps data from the driver overwhelming the data coming from the micro-sd? I'm not sure what else to do, I'm hoping maybe you know amd maybe even you helped someone in the past with the same sort of problem so it would be easy for you.

Thanks very much,
Peter



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: henry [mailto:henry-AT-spectec-dot-com-.tw]
Sent: Tuesday, November 27, 2007 1:54 AM
To: Peter
Subject: Re: TomTom 5/6 Very Slow on rx1950 with SDG-810


Dear Peter,

Thanks for responding question, I don't seem to had received your email before, would you please re-send your email if any,
or please provide more details regarding the usage problem of SDG-810 on your 1950.

best regards
henry
SPECTEC COMPUTER CO., LTD.
----- Original Message -----
From: Peter
To: henry-AT-spectec-dot-com-.tw
Sent: Tuesday, November 27, 2007 12:35 PM
Subject: TomTom 5/6 Very Slow on rx1950 with SDG-810


Hello,

I've had a lot of problems trying to get the SDG-810 to work sucessfully with the rx1950 using WM5 and TomTom 5 and 6 for about a month now with no luck. I am able to use the GPS but it is very slow and the device crashes often. It does work ok with other software such as Mapopolis, but this is old and does not have new maps. I am willing to help if i can and will test drivers for you if that helps.

Thanks,
Peter

There I just made two posts with some good info, hoping that this time they won't get deleted by the board for some reason. If they are, would be nice to know why, thanks.

Peter