Upon doing some research I found that other people were a bit peeved at this as well and many had taken it upon themselves to fabricate there own data cables. One such man even made an injection mold and manufactures a few styles of connectors. He then sends up to two of these connectors to anyone that requests them for whatever price that they pledge to pay. They then send him that amount after they receive the connector, but only if they are satisfied with them. Seems like a pretty novel approach to commerce. Also on his site he other peoples' DIY eTrex plugs. A few of which were the inspiration for my own.
My plug is simply a piece of plastic shim stock cut to the width of the eTrex socket, with enough length such that I could hot glue the wires to it to secure them. Also, it is notched to fit the little boss protruding from the eTrex socket, and added notched where the pins need to be in order to contact the pins on the eTrex. To make the pins I soldered some leads that I had snipped off of some resistors and LEDs while making a light for my Jack-o-lantern to the appropriate wires of a serial cable. The pinout and another excellent cable build can be found here. I then bent the leads
around the shim and put a mark behind the location where the eTrex pins were located. I used the marks to locate holes that I made by poking a shirt-pin through the shim. Then I bent the leads to poke up through the holes with an arch in them to ensure that they put pressure on the eTrex pins. After the leads were thus located I globbed some hot glue on the wires to hold them in place. I'll try to think of a more elegant way of fastening the wires later. For now the big glob of hot glue will have to suffice.
