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there is a huge difference between the two.
the sapphire uses the SiRF-II chipset. it outputs in 2 modes: NMEA and SiRF binary (which is basically raw data from the satellites). most software wants the NMEA protocol, so usually you will set it to NMEA.
the onyx uses trimble's new chipset, which outputs only raw GPS data in its own binary format. to get NMEA out out of it, you must load a host driver which converts the input to NMEA and spits out a virtual comm port. currently, only Windows & CE platforms are supported, so beware if you plan to use it w/ other OS's like linux.
the host-based driver uses CPU cycles on your host to perform the basic calculations that are normally done inside other GPS's. this is how they reduced the cost of the unit. it shouldn't be too much of a load on your computer, though, because the computations are relatively simple.
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~lincomatic
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01-24-2003
Linear Mode
