sunflowerflyer

Our family has just gained its second Garmin 60cx, and I just bought a 2 gig card. I'm hoping to upload the entire USA openstreetmap.org map onto this card. Has anyone done this? If so could you share the steps involved? I used to work as a CAD draftsman, and worked with a lot of government map data, so believe this is doable. What software? Load directly? etc... I don't want to compromise the original base map that comes on the unit. For the first 60cx we purchased garmin mapsource usa street maps, and loaded the entire US onto one 2 gig card. I thought the software was good for 2 units, so uploaded a small test map onto the second unit (before getting memory card). It didn't work, so now we get a map needs unlocked warning every time the unit is turned on. I somehow need to unload this map before loading the open street map data. The routing that is part of the Garmin software is very handy, but on the second unit we really just need more complete maps. Living in a rural location, our town is just a dot on the Garmin base map! Geocaching would be much easier with the roads on the map as well. My cousin just bought a 76cx, and she's very interested to see how this works as well. Thanks in advance! sunflowerflyer

I just found the open street map project www.openstreetmap.org. The basic idea is a free open worldwide street map that is user updateable. I checked a couple areas that my friends 6 month old garmin with the additional $100 mapsource software loaded is still a couple years out of date. These were very accurate in open street map. Of course the standard base map on the unit does not have near the detail. While they offer software solutions to load the map on Garmin units, I can't seem to figure out how to load it on Magellans. Although we currently own a Garmin 76, and older explorist, we have a chance to buy a magellan XL fairly reasonable. Thanks in advance, sunflowerflyer