Well, I don't have Pi's or the exact GPS device you are using. From the
Adafruit Homepage "Please note, this HAT takes over the Pi's hardware UART to
send/receive data to and from the GPS module." so I would expect some problem
here coming from different versions of gpsd and Linux...
I usually stop the gpsd service and do the echo stuff on the console to
/dev/ttyS5 in my case and after that I restart it. Since my Adafruit GPS
defaults to 9600 baud I also need to reprogram the serial data speed of the
GPS and device /dev/ttS5 itself using stty command. As last step I configure
5Hz/1Hz data output. I experienced that not every echo (especially
reprogramming the baud-rate) is honored by the device, most of the time I try
it several times.
If you do it similar I don't see a direct hardware/software version
dependency. The only point I suspect - but again I don't have a Pi - is that
the /dev/ttyAMA0 is not or does not behave identical in both Linux versions.
May be you require a fitting kernel module for getting "/dev/ttyAMA0". May be
Adafruit can help here?