I am the proud owner of a Bluetooth GPS receiver. It has given me years of geocaching fun. Although it is technically a GlobalSat model, this GPS receiver is re-packaged and sold under various brand names (Socket, Compaq, Nemerix, Nuovo, etc.). There is a picture of it to the right. If your GPS receiver is rectangular with three lights on the end, it probably has the same guts as mine.
I use my GPS receiver with my Palm-based GPS software GeoNiche. I know that I am biased, but I feel that GeoNiche is the best Palm-based program for geocaching.
Imagine my surprise and concern when I turned on my GPS receiver a few days ago and discovered that it no longer functioned properly. Normally, when it is first turned on, the blue LED blinks and the green LED is on steady. However, when I turned it on a few days ago, the blue LED was blinking but the green LED didn't come on at all. Additionally, GeoNiche was reporting no data at all from the GPS receiver. Even when there isn't a GPS fix, data are normally still sent from the GPS receiver.
After a bit of on-line research, I discovered that others have experienced the same problem. I saw two fixes posted. Both involved resetting the GPS receiver portion of the device. One post stated that they shorted a capacitor to achieve the fix, the other said that letting the battery run all the way down did the trick.
You should try letting the battery run down all the way to see if that solves the problem. This didn't work for me because, as it turns out, my model has an internal auxiliary battery and not just a capacitor. So what follows is how I fixed my bluetooth GPS receiver.
Turn the GPS receiver over and, using a small crosspoint screwdriver, remove the four screws that hold the back on.
With the back panel off, the three main components become clear. If the inside of your GPS receiver looks significantly different, these instructions may not work for you. You should seek an answer elsewhere.
The battery is connected to the main boards by a cable that can be unplugged. You can effectively "drain the battery" merely by unplugging the battery. Unplug the battery for 5 minutes to see if this cures the problem. If not, proceed.
Without the battery, the two main-boards are clearly visible. It appears as if the larger section is the GPS receiver and that it communicates with the bluetooth portion, which is the smaller section, through the cable that connects the two. Although this cable unplugs, I didn't have to do this to short the memory-backup battery.
Carefully remove the boards from the outer shell.
Separate the boards.
The memory-backup battery is on the underside of the GPS board. It is circled in the image to the right.
Make sure that you are grounded or haven't built-up a static electricity charge.
The contacts to the memory-backup battery are outlined in the picture to the right. You can carefully insert a small metal object (I used an exacto-blade) and touch these contacts together for 5 seconds.
Re-assemble the unit.
I hope this has fixed your GPS receiver. Please consider using your newly repaired GPS receiver with my Palm program GeoNiche.