Garmin watches and USB

[Chris Teague]

I'm trying to get the Garmin ANT Agent 2.2.7 to run
(http://www8.garmin.com/fitness/ant_product_page.jsp).  This software
talks over the ANT+ protocol (carried over USB) to the watch, to
download Heart Rate and GPS info.  I cannot get the program to install
because it checks that the ANT dongle is plugged in before it will
complete installation, and it won't detect it.  I also cannot debug
this .exe using IDA very effectively because it is a self-extracting
zip executable.

When I plug in the ANT dongle, it is recognized by Linux and mapped to
ttyUSB0.  The dongle came with the watch and is Garmin branded, but
it's really a Dynastream ANT2USB chip.  Below is what
/var/log/messages shows when I insert the device.

Nov 22 15:23:27 desktop kernel: [1982277.092697] usb 4-1: reset full
speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 24
Nov 22 15:23:27 desktop kernel: [1982277.335442] cp210x 4-1:1.0:
cp210x converter detected
Nov 22 15:23:27 desktop kernel: [1982277.452593] usb 4-1: reset full
speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 24
Nov 22 15:23:27 desktop kernel: [1982277.610343] usb 4-1: cp210x
converter now attached to ttyUSB0

I'm trying to figure out exactly what the installer is looking for to
see if the dongle is present.  I get a "You must connect your USB ANT
Stick.." message in a dialogbox, and a Retry button.  I thought it was
checking for the presence of a new COM port or maybe something in the
Windows device tree?

I have installed the app on  a Windows box, copied over the directory
to Linux and run the program successfully under Wine.  I do not know
if it is communicating with the ttyUSB0 device though, I suspect it is
not and I test that out tonight.  On Windows, inserting the USB Dongle
does not create a new COM port - so my guess is that the software is
not treating this as a virtual COM port.  If so using the old
dosdevices file won't work.
Any suggestions for either of these problems:
- debugging a self extracting zip installer
- getting a Windows app to use ttyUSB0 instead of whatever Windows USB
device it would normally read/write from

Thanks for any ideas,
Chris