After a good bit of searching I did find a little bit of info on the StreetFinder's receiver. Link follows:

http://www.gpsnuts.com/myGPS/GPS/Hardware%20reviews/RandMcNally/rand_mcnally_gps.htm

If this is the same receiver you have, it would appear that the RTC is not loaded. Probably a cost saving measure that relied on the Palm for initialization. Too bad they cut this corner as it is probably an otherwise ok receiver.

This guy seems to think you can upload initial position and time but implicitly NOT ephemeris data. Your Time To First Fix will probably never get better than 90 seconds or so as the receiver would not output any solution until it collects a valid ephemeris from each satellite it is going to use. Add some overhead and latancy to the 30 second long data message and allow for an occasional satellite selection challenge and...

Looking further for info onthe Rockwell Zodiac receiver I found a spec for a related version here:

www.navchina.com/right/product/pdf/zodiac_dg_gps_33.pdf

This seems to imply that almanac and last known position data (and more) are stored in EEPROM, not requiring a battery (see page 6-12, 13). If this applies to your receiver then all that is needed is time initialization.

Receivers that store recent ephemeris have an advantage in reaquisition (only after short losses of power) as the validity of the ephemeris is relatively short, it changes at least once per hour. Some receivers may use an old ephemeris for a short time while collecting a new one but that is risky in terms of accuracy and detecting faults in the satellites.

Lynn