Ok it should say 'waiting for gps location' until it get any input (either serial port or keypress). So as soon as it receives something from your GPS it switches to No satellite data.

The Rand McNally unit is notorious for sometimes not getting a proper fix for like 5 minutes or something. I've noticed this with the Palm software, it sometimes doesn't start working until the thing's been on for 5 minutes or so. Does your software handle that OK?

Well, when the GPS isn't giving me anything there isn't much I can do about it. I do want to have that satellite strength screen continuously updating while it is trying to get a fix.

My guess is that I have to do a bit more work on parsing the satellite tracking information messages. The data is probably there, but that my code is still a bit too picky about what it does with it.

Are you getting that insane switching between 'no satellite data' and the signal strengths and locations? Hmm, I can probably fix that, had that with the Trimble protocol as well but managed to get rid of it without too much trouble.