I have a Garmin Etrex and bought a Garmin PC interface cable from Maplin for £22. This has a 4 pin 'Garmin' plug on one end and a serial 9 pin female plug on the other. My current PC does not have a serial port so I bought this serial to PC cable. I have Windows XP. The cable comes with a mini CD with a driver which you have to run. The cable then worked first time.

As per first review, it works superbly with Linux (Debian & EEEPC). Ideal for connecting those pesky GPS units (eg Garmin Etrex Legend) which only have a serial interface.

My test computer runs Linux (MEPIS 6.5, Ubuntu 7.1 and Xandros). Engineers will be pleased to know that this device functions perfectly in Linux without any extra messing about with drivers and configurations. In particular I needed to be able to make my electronics equipment communicate with my PC. For various reasons MS products cannot be used. It turns out that this device works straight out of the box. I have tested it up to 115200 baud. Very usefully, it also works on a standard ASUS eeePC. Thus it allows data collection without lugging around a full size laptop! Overall Excellent!Here is what you do to make it work in Linux.Connect the usb-serial converter and peripheral devicesCheck the port as follows$ lsusbto confirm hardware is recognised$ lsmodto confirm serial port driver is installed$ stty -F /dev/ttyUSB0to show current settings$ stty -F /dev/ttyUSB0 ispeed 9600to change input baud rate to 9600$ stty -F /dev/ttyUSB0 -icrnlto inhibit double linefeed at each return$ cat /dev/ttyUSB0to display acquired data (you can also pipe it to other applications)Turn on peripherals to start data stream...It should now work...