bassmig

I had tried both of those. I did get it to work on my MS Vista partition. Might be something with my XP install. I will try it again on XP to see, I might need to re-install. I'm about due to reinstall anyways. I usually do every couple of years and it has been about that. Thanks everyone for the responses! I love this place for that, everyone wants to be so helpful!

I just bought a new 1GB SD card for my 500LE, I had used a 2GB card in there up til now however that was overkill and I will use that SD card in my Pocket PC once I get it. Anyways, I decided to just back up the existing card info onto a the new card using a card reader I have. Once I have done so and try to load up the detail map, all I get is the very basic basemap from the unit. So I figure OK maybe something happened when I copied over the info so I stick my old 2GB card in the unit(which worked previously) and same thing. I do set the detail map to point to the correct file(called detail00.imi). I have even gone so far as to reload the detail map from topo canada back onto the card and same thing happens. If anyone can shed light into this it would be GREATLY appreciated!!! The card I bought today would be rendered completely useless if I can;t upload maps into the unit. The rest of it works flawlessly, I'm stumped!! I guess I should add I'm running 500LE fw ver 2.57 , Win XP SP2, Mapsend Topo Canada v1.0e

I'll be able to try this out soon. I'm anxiously waiting for my Pocket PC. I have this combination working on my Palm right now. If you have Cachemate installed on you PPC you should only have to drop the file onto your PPC and open it with cachemate. That "in theory" should work. I am however unfamiliar with Mobile Center, I have only used activesync with my old PPC, and have yet to use a PPC for caching.

in theory you should be covered in most places in North-America. Here's a pic of the coverage areas Your GPS should automatically pick these up, it will however depend on where you are and how much tree/building cover you have. Lately(in the last 2-3 months) I pretty much alway get a WAAS sat on my satelite page on my GPS. Here's the page where I got this pic in case you would like to learn more about it. WAAS info

go to your control panel then System>hardware>>device manager. Check to see if you have a yellow exclamation mark that says something like USB device/disk drive or something similar to this, if so click on the update driver and then point it to your CD rom drive with the driver in it. It might just not know where to get the driver it needs to see your unit.

it's called WAAS and it's a satelite that makes your GPS more accurate. It provides error correction for your GPS. The only thing you need to know is that it makes it more accurate, there's a lot of theory and technical stuff behind it if you want to find out more about it.

Isn't mobipocket currently down?? I've heard from multiple sources that mobipocket is down and has been for about 1 week. Is this not possibly the reason that the option is no longer available and that this is a temporary thing??

Very nice indeed. I had been trying to find a program that did this. Will be nice on caching trips with the laptop!! What I'd like to see is a PocketPC or Palm export feature!! I have one of each and think this would be awesome! Also is there a way to mark a cache as found or do you just delete it, I've noticed that my found caches show up as blue squares(the ones exported from GSAK)?

Do you have a Princess Auto in your area?? I picked up 2 of them at my local Princess Auto for 4.99$ + tax. It's worth a look. I know of a few other people who've looked for them at various other princess auto locations without luck.

I have the same issue in south east NB, the highway to PEI past Moncton doesn;t include a new stretch that has been in place since 1998. It still has hwy 15 as going through Cap-Pele. And has POIs for the school I went to in the middle of a river. It's slightly depressing to soend so much money on maps that aren't accurate! I thought that was supposed to be the reason you'd go out and buy the stupid maps in the 1st place.

I can confirm with 100% certainty that Motorola Model SNN5588A, SNN5582B and SNN5595B work with this model as those are the ones listed in the FAQ and I am using the SNN5582B and SNN5588A in my unit currently. I'm certain that there are other models that will work in the unit. I know that there are some aftermarket ones that are also compatible. I had to glue a small piece of ribbon to make it easier to remove the battery because once it's in there is is quite hard to get out. I currently have 3 batteries for my unit, in case I run out of power in the field. I took and old samsung phone charger I had and replaced the tip to be compatible to the tip needed for the unit and now have a wall charger for it also. There are other wall chargers that are compatible to the unit without modding them(for example a PSP charger) which I purchased for 4.99$ for a car adapter. I found it to be a cheaper way to have most of the accessories that I need for the unit instead of dishing out a fortune to buy them from Magelan. If you have abny other questions don;t hesitate to post and I'll help to the best of my knowledge.

Yeah I'm glad the Atlantic provinces fit in one file, since this is the region I'm most interested in. I guess I'll have to split up the rest of the provinces. I'll probably make a Riviere du Loup to Montreal one and Montreal to Ottawa since those are the runs I'd make more often.

When I try to export maps for my 500LE with topo Canada it tells my that there is a map file size limit(The maximum region size is 65536Kbytes). Is there any way to circumvent this? I was trying to get maps of most Canadian provinces in files on my 2GB mem card hoping to stay prepared for the trips, and well since I have that much memory to pretty much waste I was hoping to stay well prepared. Any ideas? I'm using Mapsend Topo Canada v.1.00e with a Magellan eXplorist 500LE w 2GB SanDisk Memory card.

I have a 500LE and tried to use geocache manager to no avail. I found GSAK to be much more intuitive. I also use it to do paperless caching with my Palm(I find it usually works better than the 500 itself because of the limitations of the unit) I hate the fact that there is a 200 cache limit on the unit, I would say that this is my biggest annoyance on this unit. I just use the same logic as Vagabond. I agree that some data might get duplicated but it's about the only way I have found to deal with the 200 cache issue. Some people have even tried to change the limit in the unit itself but that seems to be hardcoded and cannot be modified. Many people have urged Magellan to change it in a firmware upgrade and they do not seem to be willing to move on that. http://www.mtgc.org/robertlipe/exploristwiki/ has a lot of extra info

French option is still there(would have been hard to ignore considering there are a whole lot more French people in Europe than in Canada) To be able to download from the Magellan site you have to reregister your unit as a European version. There are quite a few other places where you can download it. The European is the only version 2.57. NA only is up to 2.03 I think. I find the 2.57 has a lot more options and screens(all of which can be turned off). I would read most of this thread as it does have ALL of the pertinent information regarding the f/w upgrade including some issues that some people had. Enjoy, and happy caching!!!

PM me the details

do you have the virtual serial port installed? It sounds like it's looking for a serial (or virtual serial) connection. The only way I have ever seen a comm port on my pc was in NMEA mode which isn't a file transfer mode. I don;t have a version of MapSend so I can't try it. In File transfer mode your unit is basically seen as a hard drive, so Mapsend would have to save the file directly to the unit or have to be converted into the correct format.

Thanks for the battery tip - I will be heading out to our local Princes Auto to take a look. Update - no cell phone batteries there of any type. You can always check e-bay! Same thing for a power adaptor, PSP power adapter will work. Check the GPS thread FAQ for eXploris, it has a lot of good info there!

have you checked out the FAQ section on the top of this thread, there is a ton of useful info!! Here's a link to the explorist FAQ: eXplorist FAQ

Motorola SNN5582B and SNN5588A will also work. They may not last quite as long as the Magellan ones say they do. After my testing I seem to be getting about 7-8 hours with 1. Considreing I picked up 2 of them for 4.99$ each at an overstock hardware place I think that's pretty good!

connect the unit to your PC in file transfer mode(menu>Adv Features>Communications>File transfer) then select SD card or Internal Memory, depending on which you want to back up. Copy and paste the files from windows explorer and voila!

I never removed my SD card from the reader and everything went fine. **DEFINITELY BACK UP YOUR INTERNAL MEMORY** just in case! Like I said in my previous post, I had to reload my basemap as it was about 15-30KMs off. I like the fact that you can chose which screens to keep active! And I for the first time has actually seen that I have a WAAS connection.

just completed the F/W upgrade I like it! 1 thing though, has anyone noticed that the basemap seems to be off? I live relatively close to the ocean and on the unit i'm now about 10-15 KMs off from where I know I should be, any ideas what could cause, and more importantly fix this? Nevermind, I just reloaded the basemap and everything is fine now!! YAY!!

Where can I get it? I went to Magellan website and they won't let me download it because I have the North American LE version.

OK, 3 questions about this FW. 1) Is there a way to hide the extra screens if they are not used? 2) Will this void my warranty(since I have a North American 500LE)? 3) Is it possible to revert to old FW if needed? It seems that pretty much everyone is liking the updates to it. I'm always a little hesitant with upgrading relatively new toys. I actually completely killed my PocketPC this way.