Classic GPS?

[samwise]

I inherited a Phillips APN8 GPS system with the boat we bought just over two years ago. It looks pretty first generation stuff. The previous owner had already taken it out and we installed a Navman plotter and put the Phillips kit into the boat jumble circuit. Unsurprisingly it didn't sell. I am on the point of junking it but before it hits the skip it would be interesting to find out if any posters have used it , was it any good and whether it might have a place as a museum piece. The trouble with electronics is that things move so fast that we never get round to preserving the history and just bin the stuff. I recall that when Apple finally got to thinking about a museum for early computers they had a heck of a job finding the hardware. Any thoughts anyone?

 

[samwise]

At the time that I was writing this post, my wife was putting the Phillips kit up on the local Freecycle network. She had a reply almost instantly and the guy collected the unit within 45 minutes. We also shifted a couple of old cabin lights that he wanted for his refurbishment project. I think that is a result! I'd still be ínterested if anyone has experience of this devide.

 

[Talbot]

I was still using my 1994 Magellen Meridien handheld until last Xmas when some toss-pot knicked it with a lot of other gear. Great piece of gear, I was still perfectly happy with it, though will admit that the much reduced channel numbers in the earlier kit had an impact on the speed and accuracy of the fix.

 

[TobyJug]

Super piece of kit, great display simple to use and iseal for use with a yeoman plotter, if you have the patch antenna to go with it then it would sell quite readily. The memory battery would probably need changing, this kept the waypoints in memory.
Very much classic but not quite a museum piece yet.
Philip

 

[rich]

I started collecting old nav gear years ago, most of it now looks like it came out of the Ark! you still see some boats with there old decca aerials still up /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

 

[shmoo]

I have an old Phillips that says as part of its boot up sequence something like "converted from Decca".

Works fine, nice display. Drives nav software and so on. Some of the NMEA sentences are a bit lacking. For example the ICS printing navtex is supposed to print position every 30mins or so but won't from the old Phillips. My guess is it wouldn't drive a DSC radio either. My solution, when I get round to it, is to get a modern headless GPS to drive the modern NMEA stuff and keep the Phillips for "looking at" uses