Warriorrider

Does REI carry Delorme? I saw the PN-20 at a local REI here in California.

As long as you don't need any kind of support from Magellan it sounds like a really good deal. The Gold was a very popular tried and true gps in it's day. For that price it would be hard for me to pass up. You should be able to get cables off of ebay for cheap. They are serial though so you will need an adapter to go through usb on your pc.

Yes, the detail is much better than Topo 2008. Not only do you get better topo data but you also get poi's that City Nav has like shopping, entertainment, restaurants etc. And you can street route in either 2D Or 3D. The only downside that I see is the fact that you cannot plan outings on the pc. I took back my fourth Colorado 400t to REI and exchanged it for an Oregon 300. With the left over money I bought the 24k Topo. I think it was a great investment BUT I already have Topo 2008 because I couldn't stand not being able to see where I was going on the big screen first when planning back country outings with the 400t. So now I use Topo 2008 on the pc only and 24K on the Oregon. I even prefer to route with it more so than with City Nav NT. Now I only use 24K on the gps as it does it all.

As far as child waypoints go, I use GSAK to export a gpx file of child waypoints to a sub folder in my custom POI folder that I load as custom poi's with it's own custom symbol. Its very fast and easy and keeps my waypoint list uncluttered and much easier to manage. When I export the child waypoints to its folder it is just written over so I always have a fresh list to match the caches that I sent to the Oregon (no more Colorado ).

Do you have have any Mapsend maps? The newer ones will transfer to your Explorist. You can also download Mapsend Lite from Magellan's website and it will transfer POI, Geocaches, Tracks, etc to your Explorist. Mapsend Lite is a free download. Vantage Point works too but not as well in my opinion. GSAK will do the job too.

Since you have both the Colorado and the Oregon how would you compare the screen readability in map view between the units? I have seen the pictures on the wiki but I would like to hear what you have to say having first hand experience with both units. I ask because I have a Colorado and am considering the Oregon (if REI will let me do an exchange).

It sounds like you are looking at you gps folder and not you sd card. Maybe this is what's wrong? Your caches can be in internal memery or on the sd card. You will need to navigate up a level from internal memory to sd card when you go into active setup to see if they are there.

The file has the .ws extension but nothing shows on the main map screen still. I guess worst case scenario i just enter the caches as POI's? this is very frustrating but at least there's a work-around. The file should have a .gs extension NOT .ws They will not show on you map with .ws extension.

Can't speak to 2.60. In some earlier versions of the firmware, there were issues with the practice you describe. At the time, the only way to make this work correctly was to connect the unit to your computer, delete the existing .gpx file, disconnect, start the unit and allow it to notice there are no .gpx files, reconnect, copy the new .gpx file to the unit, disconnect, and restart the unit. I don't recall when this was fixed, but it was fixed. I believe there were changes in 2.60 with regard to loading cache information from an SD card. Do you have an SD card installed? If so, are you certain there are no .gpx files on it? Even if not, I suppose it's possible that some of those changes re-introduced earlier problems, or introduced new ones. The other thing to be sure about with Windows is that you are properly dismounting the USB "disk" device for the Colorado via the "safely remove devices" mechanism. Yep, did the connect to pc, delete gpx files, safely remove, fire up the gps to see the caches were there, re-connect to pc and send over a new gpx file with same name as always but with only one cache in it, safely remove from PC, fire the gps up and still several hundred caches in the gps. Connect back to pc and only see the very small current file and the very small cache file I had sent over with one cache. Nothing the size of hundreds of caches. I had removed the SD card prior to all this just in case. I tried showing hidden files on my computer but still nothing. And yet they were there and only visible by looking at them with the gps on. Like I said, deleting the actual gpx folder, not just the files within it was the fix. Very weird

Not me. And I was trying on my desktop running XP and my laptop running Vista. No matter what I did I could not see any gpx files in my gpx folder or elsewhere and yet they were there when I turned my gps on and went to geocaches. Both found and unfound on the same unfound list. Hook it back up the the pc and nothing visible. The funny thing is I ALWAYS send my gpx file of 1950 caches to my gps with the same name. One file only. So after a day of caching I would just send the new file with same name and found caches already removed so it would always just over write the existing file. That way my finds would no longer be on the gps and I was ready to go again. It was after the 2.60 firmware upgrade that the caches stayed there even though I could not see them or over write them. It wasn't till I deleted the entire gpx folder that the problem went away. All has been good since. I also found some waypoints with odd characters like little boxes in the name at the same time. I don't know how one would have effected the other but all is well now. It would often hang until I deleted both the gpx folder and the waypoints.

The file doesn't look unusual to me. The few UTF8 characters are not unusual for text in geocaches of the region. See for yourself: http://filebin.ca/vhtavo/krkbug.gpx Just to make sure, I removed all my gpx files from the CO (originally I had all geocaches from Croatia in a gpx file), removed the Current.gpx, and uploaded just this one file containing a single cache, and repeated the exercise - with the same result. Anyone wants to take the bait and try for himself? I had a problem with removing gpx files from my Colorado and then it still showing caches in geocache mode even though when hooking back up to my computer it showed no gpx files in the gps. It drove me nuts trying to dump the caches off of my gps. Finnaly figured out that the only fix was to just delete the actual gpx folder itself. All was fixed after that.

Yes, you'll need to be on the map page to hit Menu then Map Setup then just toggle the joystick to the right and make sure that Geocache Icons has a checkmark next to it.

THIS site may help with getting your basemap back.

-Oz-, Thank you for your hard work. The addition of the detailed contour lines is fantastic. It works great with City Nav NT as well as the topo maps on my Colorado 400t. I have two profiles setup for geocaching. One is with the (topo) shading on and the other is with the shading turned off for easier viewing. The addition of the extra contour lines to both is very, very nice. This makes for a much more useful map IMHO. I was surprised to find that when hitting the options button to select maps that there is separate options for the contour lines and the street data with your maps. Very cool! I find that leaving the street data off and using the contour lines only is the best option to use with my existing maps. I am a very happy camper with this extra detail. Thanks again!

From the compass page you can select Sight N Go from the options button to do what you are asking about. There are not any instructions in any Colorado literature that I can find but the instructions on how it works are in the 60CSX manual. I see it on my compass page now but I could swear that the Sight N Go was missing before I just calibrated my compass

So how do you get 3D Topo to work with the Crossover??? Nevermind - I figured it out. Dropped the first and last numbers from the serial no. that Mapsend asks for, just like the Explorist.

I can't speak of the battery drain. I haven't noticed a difference since changing to the all white background. Still getting 12 - 14 hours on my 400t. But the all white really helps me to read the cache descriptions more than anything. It just seems to be easier on my aging eyes.

I also had an error message come up. Something about missing TigerData (I wish I had written it down). The update would not work so I went back to the previous version.

So how do you get 3D Topo to work with the Crossover???

I just used the latest version of the POI loader and it worked fine. This time it worked correctly using express mode to the gps. It didn't work in express mode using 2.54 beta.

Thanks Timpat. That did the trick. I just wish I knew why it happened all of a sudden. It worked fine yesterday. I cleared out all of the gpx files thinking there was something wrong there but that didn't do it. The reset fixed it though. Thanks again.

Here is a new bug for my unit. If I use the Where To button then hit tracks my unit shuts down. Not good.

You can export a gpx file directly to the Colorado with GSAK and the cache containers do appear on the map. Traditional, multi etc symbols. And you do have the full descriptions including hints, terrain, difficulty etc.

I'm not sure if THIS will help or not?!

You'll need to look at the serial no. underneath the battery. It has an extra digit in front and back of your serial no. that you see on your About screen.