DarrenF

Thank you! I didn't realize there was an email address specifically for the purpose of reporting issues with the Legend's Beta firmware. I need to do more reading and less clicking of "Download Now" I'll try to draft a well-written summary and email it to them. The new scroll-by-page with the zoom-in/out buttons is very nice. However, it does not work on the following screens: "Find | Cities | By Name" and "Find | Points of Interest | By Name". Curiously, it works fine in "Find | Waypoints | By Name" (I didn't expect it to, thinking it was a problem with all the "By Name" dialog boxes. Can anyone else with the new firmware confirm this? Can anyone find any other situations where scolling-by-page using the zoom buttons doesn't work? The update notes indicate "Set zoom in and zoom out keys to page through SOME lists." [emphasis mine], but it appears to work on most lists (all I've encountered except the two listed above). df [This message was edited by DarrenF on August 19, 2002 at 02:43 PM.] [This message was edited by DarrenF on August 20, 2002 at 07:30 AM.]

Thank you! I didn't realize there was an email address specifically for the purpose of reporting issues with the Legend's Beta firmware. I need to do more reading and less clicking of "Download Now" I'll try to draft a well-written summary and email it to them. The new scroll-by-page with the zoom-in/out buttons is very nice. However, it does not work on the following screens: "Find | Cities | By Name" and "Find | Points of Interest | By Name". Curiously, it works fine in "Find | Waypoints | By Name" (I didn't expect it to, thinking it was a problem with all the "By Name" dialog boxes. Can anyone else with the new firmware confirm this? Can anyone find any other situations where scolling-by-page using the zoom buttons doesn't work? The update notes indicate "Set zoom in and zoom out keys to page through SOME lists." [emphasis mine], but it appears to work on most lists (all I've encountered except the two listed above). df [This message was edited by DarrenF on August 19, 2002 at 02:43 PM.] [This message was edited by DarrenF on August 20, 2002 at 07:30 AM.]

Good to see someone else with a high enough geek-quotient to be interested in the nuances of the calculator performance I agree, consistancy should dictate that ln of zero or a negative operand as well as 1/X of zero should result in "ERROR!", just like square-root of a negative. I'm glad to hear the C/CE issue, at least, has been rectified. A Commodore calculator? I never knew they made calculators. Must have been a European thing--they were only known for computers over here (the venerable C-64) I agree with you about that retaining the value in calculator memory (and perhaps even the value displayed) would be nice. But then I realized even the Windows calculator doesn't do that, then again, you can switch applications to do something else w/o closing it. Cut&Paste functionality does sound like a stretch, given the interface and limited inputs, however one simple approach would be to add a button to the on-screen keyboard which would paste the number from the calculator Memory into the current input field. Still no piece of cake to implement, though... I'd be happy with the hi-lighted button selection wrapping around the sides. Oh, by the way, I discovered another calculation error: 0^0 gives a result of "ERROR!" instead of the correct result of "1". I also played with the Calender a bit, but didn't find any problems. It correctly shows 2000 as a leap year. I did not wish to subject my clickstick to the ~1200 clicks required to check 1900 or 2100 (neither should be a leap year) much less 1600 or 2400 (both should be a leap year), df [This message was edited by DarrenF on August 19, 2002 at 02:45 PM.]

Good to see someone else with a high enough geek-quotient to be interested in the nuances of the calculator performance I agree, consistancy should dictate that ln of zero or a negative operand as well as 1/X of zero should result in "ERROR!", just like square-root of a negative. I'm glad to hear the C/CE issue, at least, has been rectified. A Commodore calculator? I never knew they made calculators. Must have been a European thing--they were only known for computers over here (the venerable C-64) I agree with you about that retaining the value in calculator memory (and perhaps even the value displayed) would be nice. But then I realized even the Windows calculator doesn't do that, then again, you can switch applications to do something else w/o closing it. Cut&Paste functionality does sound like a stretch, given the interface and limited inputs, however one simple approach would be to add a button to the on-screen keyboard which would paste the number from the calculator Memory into the current input field. Still no piece of cake to implement, though... I'd be happy with the hi-lighted button selection wrapping around the sides. Oh, by the way, I discovered another calculation error: 0^0 gives a result of "ERROR!" instead of the correct result of "1". I also played with the Calender a bit, but didn't find any problems. It correctly shows 2000 as a leap year. I did not wish to subject my clickstick to the ~1200 clicks required to check 1900 or 2100 (neither should be a leap year) much less 1600 or 2400 (both should be a leap year), df [This message was edited by DarrenF on August 19, 2002 at 02:45 PM.]

I have a Legend (not a Vista, but pretty close) and it seems the Favorites are listed in the order they were added. I haven't played when them enough to determine if anything causes them to change order, but I will and let you know. df

It's fairly error-laiden in the area I live as wel (NE Florida), but it still appears to be the best of the options. To be fair, it's a growing area, and a lot has changed in recent years, but some of the problems/errors/mistakes are not at all due to that. df

st_richardson: No, I haven't contacted Garmin. I do not know anyone at Garmin, and from what I've seen posted on this message board it seems there is very little likelihood that an email sent to them regarding this matter would be read by someone who matters. Please forgive my pessimism. But if someone knows a Garmin email address other than the 'front door', that isn't read only by imbeciles who assume they're answering the dumb questions of even-bigger-imbecile-users, I'll try that. John, Mark & Kyle: Yes, the devil is in the details. Programming a calculator is is not nearly as simple as it sounds on the surface. I realize that this is just a "free accessory", not at all core to the function of the unit and I can understand if they don't really care about the minutia of its operation. But I'm of the opinion that if you're going to do something, you may as well do it right. Anders: Yes, shortly after I posed my findings, I searched the arhives and ran across your prior post about the missing exponent digit and ln incorrect function. I need to make it a habit to do that sort of search BEFORE posting . I'm not sure what they fixed since, as I said, I neglected to give the calculator in 2.38 a good once-over before I upgraded. What does the Vista's calculator do for ln on a negative number? (give 0, error, leave the displayed number unchanged, or other). Seems like I read that the C and CE buttons weren't working right before; they seem to function normally from what I can tell. I agree with you about the INV key. I would trade the "%" key on the scientific calc for it. There would be no need to squeeze more letters onto the keys, the displayed labels could simply change from Tan, Cos, Sin, ln to Atan, ACos, Asin, e^x as the INV key was toggled. If they really wanted to get fancy, X^Y, X^2, (root)X could become X(root)Y, LOG, 10^X... I made another observation: in most in-fix calculators (although I'd love to see a RPN calc included in the future...) pressing two operation buttons in a row usually causes the first one to be ignored and the 2nd one to apply. For example, if you press "3 +", and then realize "Crap, I mean to multiply, not add" and press "* 3 =", you get 9 (3*3) on well-programmed calculators. The eTrex calculator doesn't function this way; pressing the second operation key causes the first operation to be executed with the displayed number as both operands (in the above example, the eTrex displays 6 when you hit * rather then ignore the + and await the 2nd operand for multiplication).

st_richardson: No, I haven't contacted Garmin. I do not know anyone at Garmin, and from what I've seen posted on this message board it seems there is very little likelihood that an email sent to them regarding this matter would be read by someone who matters. Please forgive my pessimism. But if someone knows a Garmin email address other than the 'front door', that isn't read only by imbeciles who assume they're answering the dumb questions of even-bigger-imbecile-users, I'll try that. John, Mark & Kyle: Yes, the devil is in the details. Programming a calculator is is not nearly as simple as it sounds on the surface. I realize that this is just a "free accessory", not at all core to the function of the unit and I can understand if they don't really care about the minutia of its operation. But I'm of the opinion that if you're going to do something, you may as well do it right. Anders: Yes, shortly after I posed my findings, I searched the arhives and ran across your prior post about the missing exponent digit and ln incorrect function. I need to make it a habit to do that sort of search BEFORE posting . I'm not sure what they fixed since, as I said, I neglected to give the calculator in 2.38 a good once-over before I upgraded. What does the Vista's calculator do for ln on a negative number? (give 0, error, leave the displayed number unchanged, or other). Seems like I read that the C and CE buttons weren't working right before; they seem to function normally from what I can tell. I agree with you about the INV key. I would trade the "%" key on the scientific calc for it. There would be no need to squeeze more letters onto the keys, the displayed labels could simply change from Tan, Cos, Sin, ln to Atan, ACos, Asin, e^x as the INV key was toggled. If they really wanted to get fancy, X^Y, X^2, (root)X could become X(root)Y, LOG, 10^X... I made another observation: in most in-fix calculators (although I'd love to see a RPN calc included in the future...) pressing two operation buttons in a row usually causes the first one to be ignored and the 2nd one to apply. For example, if you press "3 +", and then realize "Crap, I mean to multiply, not add" and press "* 3 =", you get 9 (3*3) on well-programmed calculators. The eTrex calculator doesn't function this way; pressing the second operation key causes the first operation to be executed with the displayed number as both operands (in the above example, the eTrex displays 6 when you hit * rather then ignore the + and await the 2nd operand for multiplication).

Sounds a little to me like Brian McMahon is full of sh1t. I find nothing in the manual about such a behavior, and my experience is contradictory as well: I have left my unit on, while unable to get a satellite fix, for some time and while I did notify me of the inability to track satellites and asked gave me options of what I wanted to do, it never powered down on its own. You can look to see a history of error messages (one is created if the unit shuts itself down due to low battery, or any other reason in theory). On the "Trip Computer" screen, press zoom-out, zoom-in, zoom-out. This will display a "Diagnostics" screen, with a list of shutdown error reports. The list can be cleared from the options pull-down. I don't know what to make of the 'Stack' information also available, but I'd love to hear from someone who does . df [This message was edited by DarrenF on August 15, 2002 at 03:12 PM.] [This message was edited by DarrenF on August 15, 2002 at 03:13 PM.]

Sounds a little to me like Brian McMahon is full of sh1t. I find nothing in the manual about such a behavior, and my experience is contradictory as well: I have left my unit on, while unable to get a satellite fix, for some time and while I did notify me of the inability to track satellites and asked gave me options of what I wanted to do, it never powered down on its own. You can look to see a history of error messages (one is created if the unit shuts itself down due to low battery, or any other reason in theory). On the "Trip Computer" screen, press zoom-out, zoom-in, zoom-out. This will display a "Diagnostics" screen, with a list of shutdown error reports. The list can be cleared from the options pull-down. I don't know what to make of the 'Stack' information also available, but I'd love to hear from someone who does . df [This message was edited by DarrenF on August 15, 2002 at 03:12 PM.] [This message was edited by DarrenF on August 15, 2002 at 03:13 PM.]

I recently acquired an eTrex Legend, and shortly thereafter upgraded the firmware from the factory shipped version (2.38) to the latest beta version (2.40c). One of the claimed improvements of the new version was improved calculator function. I didn't play with the calculator much BEFORE upgrading, so I can't compare, but I did find some interesting (and a few just plain wrong) results: -the calculator displays up to 6 places past the decimal, but the user can only enter numbers with up to 5 digits past the decimal -EXCEPTION to above: if the number begins with all 0's numbers as small as .0000000001 can be entered, but most calculations involving it will lose it (due to the precision of the displayed results) however you can get results from the 1/X and ln functions on these very small numbers. -entry of numbers with multiple decimal points is allowed (up to 3 decimal points), however numbers after the 2nd decimal point seem to just be ignored--behaviour after entering/using these numbers can be odd until C or CE is pressed. -calculator handles numbers as large as 9.899999 E+24 (yes, 9.899999, not 9.999999, anything over that gives "ERROR!") but you only directly enter a numbers up to 9999999999 -displays most(?) integers up to 99999999999999999 w/o scientific notation -oddly, it handles -0 distinctly, but this does not seem to lead to any odd or incorrect results -does not generate an error for divide by zero (gives result of 0 instead), or ln of zero and negative numbers (does nothing, displayed number does not change) -results in scientific notation that should be E+10 display incorrectly as E+1, similarly results that should be E+20 displays as E+2 (proof: enter "4.3" and hit "X^2" repeatedly) -algorithm for calculating tangent function a little off near and at the asymtote: tan of 89.99999 gives result of "5729578.057851", should be 5729577.951308 tan of 89.999999 gives "57295790.748394", should be 57295779.5130823 tan of 90 degrees gives "-2.864114E+14" instead of an error -repeated pressing of operation buttons which require 2 operands (+,-,*,/,X^Y) can lead some slightly unpredictable behavior -would be nice if the selector wrapped around sides rather than going to the window-control button -Sin, Cos and Tan of any number in scientific notation (as well as some very large numbers not in scientific notation) gives a result of "0" instead of the correct answer -X^Y for some large-ish numbers gives result of "0" instead of "ERROR!" (e.g. 256^256) df [This message was edited by DarrenF on August 15, 2002 at 02:24 PM.]

I just got my Legend less than a week ago, It arrived with firmware version 2.38, so I upgraded to the 2.40c day-before-yesterday (I even hacked the firmware with a custom start-up message I definitely like the ability to page thru long lists with the zoom buttons. I'm sure the battery-type option will be nice once I get me some rechargables. df

I just got my Legend less than a week ago, It arrived with firmware version 2.38, so I upgraded to the 2.40c day-before-yesterday (I even hacked the firmware with a custom start-up message I definitely like the ability to page thru long lists with the zoom buttons. I'm sure the battery-type option will be nice once I get me some rechargables. df