Well bummer, still can't get useful strings from the gps module. I now wonder if I have fried something in wiring it up to the other components. First saw this sort of stuff after receiving data from the blue smirf. Tried wired connections, swapping baud rates and ports, even hosts - no dice. Serial output from the arduino seems ok. Only the data that originates from the gps unit is wonky. Hmmm wish I had a second gps unit.... Wonder if I could isolate the problem if I took a shifter board to push output via a different com port / hyperterminal session to the uart on the arduino. Oooh ooooh I bet I could wire up the gps unit to a shifter board to read the raw output, or better yet go and install the software provided by the manufacturer to test and configure the unit!