A small follow up to this post on making your own Magellan cable. The geocities site that was linked to seems to be down. I have scraped the page from the internet archive, located images, and am recreating it here for posterity...
THIS PAGE IS A MIRROR OF http://www.geocities.com/gormikk/conexione.htm WHICH IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE...
MAGELLAN 315 HOMEMADE DATACABLE
Due to the high price of the "official" Magellan Datacable, I think that it´s worth to
make an homemade cable, so we are going to see how the connection must be done
to transmit data between the Magellan 315 GPS and the PC.
Connection to the PC
This figure show you 9 pin female connection for the PC serial port (like a mouse plug):
Pin
2: |
Data Out
|
Pin
3: |
Data
In |
Pin
5: |
Ground |
You must solder these pins to three wires of an RS-232 cable.
In this image you can see a scheme of PC <==> GPS connection:
The connection with the GPS is more problematic, since a standard connector does not exist, we must
make one.
Connection to the GPS

Don't worry, it's no difficult! we must obtain a little board of wood or plastic and four pen
springs. Once we have the previous, drill five holes in the little board, four
for the contacts (Ø 3,5~4 mm, smaller than the springs diameter) and one for the
screw that will hold the junk to the GPS.
In order to drill the holes accurately, once I measured the distances between contacts, I drew a
pattern in AutoCad that printed in a sticky label and I stuck it on the
little board to drill the holes on it.
The pattern in
Acrobat Reader format is here
Once we have drilled the holes we introduce the springs in the little board turning them
as if they were screws.
The screw to hold this connector must be equal to the Magellan 315 batteries compartment
screw, at least with the same type of thread.
Finally, connect the cables to the springs, so that the subjection will be firmer is
advisable, once you have verified that everything runs, to cover the ends of the
springs with putty or strong glue. This is optional, but you will agree that we
insulate the contacts and the assembly is firmer.