GPS Interferes with DSCustoms Touchscreen! Help!

gork · 09-02-2003, 12:39 AM

I am having a very troubling problem that I cannot resolve. My GPS unit (attached to COM2) intereferes with my touchscreen (700YYV from DSCustoms) on COM1.

What happens is that the touchscreen driver appears to be interpreting data from the GPS as touchscreen data. Thus, every second or so, the cursor jumps somwhere and sometimes "clicks" or "right clicks" -- needless to say when this is happening the computer is totally unusable. At first I thought it was some problem with the touchscreen, but everything works perfectly when I unplug the GPS.

If I boot the PC with the GPS powered off or not attached to the serial port and plug it in after windows comes up, then everything works properly. The touchscreen software will ignore the port.

I have tried the following:

1) Switching COM ports. It does not seem to matter what COM port the GPS is on; the touchscreen driver will always pick it up.

2) Reconfiguring every possible setting in the touchscreen driver's dialog boxes. Even though the COM port the GPS is on does not have a configuration in the touchscreen driver dialog, it still gets picked up by the driver!

This is a very frustrating problem, so I'm hoping someone else has had it and knows how to fix it. Searching revealed nothing interesting, so I hope that my situation is not unique. Anyway, I'm going to try installing the drivers I downloaded from DSCustoms in case they are newer than the ones from the CD, and if that doesn't work, I'll also try the drivers from Xenarc (I am guessing that they are the same..) .. I checked GAIN's site but they did not have anything for download...

Thanks for any help!

gork · 09-02-2003, 12:43 AM

Oh yeah; the GPS Is a Rand McNally serial receiver if it makes a difference...

frodobaggins · 09-02-2003, 12:51 AM

look in your device manager, I'm quite sure you'll have a serial mouse listed as being on the same port as the gps, disable it (not remove) and then see what happens

gork · 09-02-2003, 01:40 AM

Yes, Turns out I discovered this on my own after uninstalling the touchscreen driver did not stop the problem from occuring. I disabled the falsely detected serial mouse device and it works like a champion now!

Btw thanks for the quick response nonetheless

DodgeCummins · 09-04-2003, 10:20 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by gork

Yes, Turns out I discovered this on my own after uninstalling the touchscreen driver did not stop the problem from occuring. I disabled the falsely detected serial mouse device and it works like a champion now!

Btw thanks for the quick response nonetheless

It will probably happen again. If I shut down and reboot normally then I can leave the GPS powered, but if for some reason it doesn't shut down properly, and I have to turn it off manually, then sometimes it goes through the new hardware search and tries to install it again.

My solution (after a year or so of fiddleing with it is...I have a switch on the dash for the computer power and the gps power. If I do a hard shutdown, then I turn the GPS off.

I had to do this because I forgot and it started screwing things up for me royally recently...(previously I just unplugged the power cord, under the seat, if I remembered)

I also have disable the mouse, but it installs a new one anyway...