JohnInDC

That sounds about right to me. Another way to say it may be that the many sources of GPS error remain relatively constant from moment to moment. Or! If they don't, then the GPS software is programmed to ignore such errors below a certain level. In fact one or the other of those pretty much has to be true, otherwise whenever you were standing still with a margin of error of 30 feet, the GPS would have you hopping around inside that circle like a bug in a skillet.

To be honest I'm not sure if or what I did to enable this. I *think* I had to go into the VPC preferences to instruct it to use one of the COM ports for USB communications - I vaguely remember futzing around with USB setup in VPC at the outset. It's been a while. I can tell you though that it must have been pretty simple, because I would remember an ordeal! I am pretty sure that if anything in OS X is running that might want to talk to the GPS too, that'll keep VPC from seeing it correctly. Did you install the Windows USB drivers?

I can now report that the FW 2.6 and SW 2.5 combination does not fry your unit. Phew. The FW downgrade *did* erase all of my stored and saved waypoints and tracks and geocaches (none of them offloaded, rats) and reset everything to the default (except my custom Welcome message, go figure) but otherwise the process went smoothly. That didn't fix the transfer glitch though. No, that seemed to require the much simpler step of merely rebooting Windows 2000 from within Virtual PC. After that everything went fine, I re-upgraded to 2.7 and the unit, along with the new map, is working fine. I'm ticked about those waypoints though. Should've backed them up -

I've got a GPSMap 60csx with a 1GB card inside. A few weeks under Firmware 2.6 / Software 2.4 I had no trouble uploading Mapquest maps (USA Topo). Since then I've upgraded to Firmare 2.7 / Software 2.5 and now the transfers fail. Specifically, Mapquest spends its 15 minutes building the map from the CDs and then when the moment comes to transfer the data to the GPS, powers off the GPS and then complains that it can't find it. In 5-6 attempts I haven't been able to make it work. I don't think it's a USB issue (or if it is, it's a very obscure one) - Mapquest sees the unit just fine, and is happy to transfer tracks off the unit onto the map. I'm using the same USB port I did before. The one thing that sets me apart from most people here is that I am running a Macintosh (OS X 10.3.9) and performing these transfers from within Virtual PC. Nothing about that configuration has changed, though, which leads me to believe that the problem lies somewhere in the Firmware / Software upgrades. So I have two questions before I downgrade the software to try to isolate the issue: 1) Has anyone else encountered this problem, on a PC or on a Mac? (I did see something similar described in another posting but it seemed to be hardware related). 2) Is it possible to downgrade the system software (2.5 -> 2.4) in the same manner as firmware? If so, does anyone know where the 2.4 installer might be found? And - I suppose this counts as a third, or fourth, question -- if I can't do that is there any known problem in running FW 2.6 alongside SW 2.5? Thanks in advance for any and all help.

Oh, I can't imagine that Garmin will do anything different than publish free OS X versions of some or all of the various programs they now give away for free on their website. The Mapquest CDs contain only data, and the data should be platform-independent (like jpgs or text files).

I have a Garmin 60csx and a Mac desktop (dual 2.0 G5s, 10.3.9) and have had pretty good success with a combination of MacGPS Pro and Virtual PC / Mapquest. There are occasional glitches (I'm about to post about one in fact) but for basic things like transferring maps and geocaches, the combination works fine. I'm eager to see what Garmin does later this year with its promised OS X support but for now I'm content.

Indeed. We were in Pennsylvania, where I was surprised to learn from the track line that we actually detoured around Pittsburgh rather than fly directly over it. At 35000+ feet I can't imagine what we'd have risked running into! Just one of the fun reasons to run a GPS on a plane I guess -

Yes, there is a list - sad to say I don't know the link. But at least confirmation that it's out there may inspire you to look longer for it! I took a quick look at it the time I saw it and concluded that most airlines (most) don't care -- that is, they consider a GPS to be like any other "portable electronic device". Northwest is one of the benign ones. I just flew from Washington to Detroit and midway through the flight one of the flight attendants caught sight of my unit and asked, "where are we?" Try to sit next to a south-facing window!

Good news. That said, I haven't got much experience in firmware updates -- I mean, I know how to do it and all (Macintosh notwithstanding!) but I don't know whether it's generally considered safe & prudent to download and install a non-beta update such as this, or whether I should wait to see if it spawns a different, and maybe nastier, set of bugs? I'm running 2.6 now, having generally steered clear of the beta.

Oh, to be clear - I really like this 60csx. The reception is great, the menus are easy to navigate, and can be customized to a fare-thee-well. The altimeter thing is annoying and a little disappointing but only because I think Garmin has missed out on what would seem like a common sense implementation (i.e., give user the option of picking which altimeter reading is displayed). (I do like the idea of adding 'gps elevation' as a selectable data field. That would resolve my issues.) Other than that really pretty minor gripe, I've been quite happy so far.

If you want to add multiple waypoints from different files, you can 'open' them all and command-click on them in the map to select them individually - from there your 'transfer from map' will transfer all the waypoints at once.

Yes, thanks. I found that feature, no problem. What I want to do is to instruct the GPS to ignore the barometer altogether during stretches when I know that the barometer will be inaccurate, for example in the passenger compartment of a jetliner. If you can't do that, then when you're buying a 60csx instead of a 60cx, you're not buying an additional way to measure altitude but paying extra money to make an irrevocable choice about how your GPS will display it. That doesn't seem right!

I always understood that if you had a lock on 4 or more satellites it could tell you your elevation - not with anything approaching the precision of your location on the sphere, but a useful indicator anyhow. On this plane I found the GPS-based estimate to be pretty well on the money, corresponding well within reason to the captain's periodic announcements ("we have just passed 27,000 feet on our way to our cruising altitude of 38,000 feet . . ."). I know what you mean about 'paying for the feature', but they give you the option of disabling the (equally optional) magnetic compass in favor of the GPS. I don't know why they'd treat the altimeter differently. I mean, in both cases sometimes the feature you paid for just doesn't work, and you need to disable it.

What Mac software are you using to do attempt this?

This is a semi-related question: How do you instruct a 60csx to report *only* GPS altitude? I used my unit on a flight from Washington to Detroit recently. Not surprisingly the unit initially reported low (<8000 ft), barometically-based altitudes as we ascended to our cruising altitude of 38,000 (!) feet. Periodically I would 'calibrate' to the GPS altitude, which seemed to be reporting more or less accurately, but from that point forward the unit would fail to accurately report our continuing climb and I'd have to recalibrate again. I tried to figure out a way to persuade the unit to ignore the cabin pressure but couldn't figure out how. Any hints? Also as an aside, there came a point in the flight, above 35,000 feet, when nothing I did could convince the unit that we were higher than about 7500 feet. It was correctly reporting "GPS altitude", but a recalibration would last for literally a fraction of a second before snapping back to 7400-7500 feet. This was with auto-calibration on and off both. Seemed like a bug to me.

I've seen this problem too. For what it's worth: Unit about 3-4 weeks old Running 2.60 (not the beta) I live in Washington DC and the unit hasn't been above 500 ft since I've owned it Altimeter periodically displays "______" The problem can be cured, temporarily, with a recalibration or a restart Track log is about 70% full I had never calibrated the altimeter until the first time the problem presented itself I've dropped a note to Garmin. Let's see what they say about this unit.

Andy, yours is a very timely post. *Just today* I sent off an e-mail to the folks at MacGPS Pro asking if there's any way around that one-shot-and-reset glitch with the 60csx. So while I'm waiting to hear back from them, I'll throw the question out here: Is there any way to batch upload waypoints or geocaches to a 60csx using MacGPS Pro? I've got about 20-25 geocaches (in Michigan as it happens) that I'd like to keep handy on the unit, and it's really tedious cycling the power *and* MacGPS Pro after every one of them. If not MacGPS Pro, can this be done with any other program under OS X 10.3 or 10.4 (or Virtual PC for that matter)? Thanks to any and all.

My first 60csx worked fine for about 3 hours before dying completely - it just wouldn't power on. It certainly hadn't suffered any trauma in the brief time it took me to load maps and waypoints onto it! Anyhow, nothing made any difference, not external power or new batteries or anything. REI took it back with little comment and the replacement unit has been working fine. Haven't subjected it to any tough field test yet though.