that device is a commercial marine solution - no doubt ruggedised and the outputs are optically isolated meaning its pretty rugged - [good in a marine situation].

I have one of their NMEA MUX on my boat -- combines NMEA from depthsounder, knot log, GPS into a single stream for a PC. Works great, but I always wonder if that epoxy is there just to hide their simple circuitry!!

Once again, I am indebted to BBS denizens (jaharkes, Bitt, yourself) for your enthusiastic and informative replies. Your collective advice will help get me on my way. I have some time to work on this -- like a year of so! If I am still employed come Christmas and I pass my Ham exam, I may break down and buy this radio to start working with the APRS interface. I have Trimble and Encore GPS on hand and have some MAX233 from Jameco, and I finally broke down and bought a breadboard. Yes, heck, I was going to build a 232 interface anyway, so why not try to soup it up? One goal, given the nearly nonexistent space behind my dash, is to put GPS, 5V supply and RS232 splitter in a slim package that may fit under my rear seat. Another odd idea we have had is to see if we can do a stealth install of the GPS antenna inside the cheezy fiberglass spoiler on the wagon (pics to follow).

Well, standard time is almost here, and Seattle's 100 Days of Darkness create a great opportunity for thinks like soldering. Now to clean off the desk (spent most of the past day crimping/soldering up this ).

Thanks again!