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Garmin Etrex Legend


Player2

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I have a garmin etrex legend, plain jane unit, practicaly discontinuied due to the serial port connection it requires. The store where I bought it wanted to sell me $100 program to download topo maps on to my unit, which only has 8mgs storage capacity.

 

my questions are 1. is the software worthwhile?

2. is there a less expensive alternative?

3. how much area will 8 mgs give me?

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I have a garmin etrex legend, plain jane unit, practicaly discontinuied due to the serial port connection it requires. The store where I bought it wanted to sell me $100 program to download topo maps on to my unit, which only has 8mgs storage capacity.

 

my questions are 1. is the software worthwhile?

2. is there a less expensive alternative?

3. how much area will 8 mgs give me?

 

I have the eTrex Legend (blue) with the 8mg memory. I bought the package deal, GPSr, carrier, car charger, topo maps, etc. It suits me just fine. I have 16 maps plus almost 400 waypoints saved on my Legend and it shows only 19% of the memory used.

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I have a garmin etrex legend, plain jane unit, practicaly discontinuied due to the serial port connection it requires. The store where I bought it wanted to sell me $100 program to download topo maps on to my unit, which only has 8mgs storage capacity.

 

my questions are 1. is the software worthwhile?

2. is there a less expensive alternative?

3. how much area will 8 mgs give me?

 

Hi,

 

1. Yes the software is worthwhile. I find it very useful

2. Garmin Topo is the only topo software you can load into the Legend.

3. I did a quick map of your area here. The pink area will use up 7.58MB of map memory. You can use all of your 8MB of map memory and still be able to store you 1000 waypoints as they are to different memories being used.

 

email/pm sent.. :)

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I have a garmin etrex legend, plain jane unit, practicaly discontinuied due to the serial port connection it requires. The store where I bought it wanted to sell me $100 program to download topo maps on to my unit, which only has 8mgs storage capacity.

 

my questions are 1. is the software worthwhile?

2. is there a less expensive alternative?

3. how much area will 8 mgs give me?

 

I have a Legend and I would not say it is discontinued because of the serial port, you just have to add some additional equipment to upload or download if you do not have a serial port. The Garmin Topo maps are not bad and I feel were worth the money I spent on the program. There is not another alternative although you may be able to find the program in the For Sale section or on E-Bay for less the $100.00. How much are will 8 megs give you will depend on where you are and what you want to upload. I was able to upload a fair chunk of cental and northern New Mexico into my Legend.

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On the same subject of maps, I lost my base map on my Etrex Legend. Has anyone else ever had that problem? Of course the unit didn't come with a CD when I bought it. Anyone know where I can find the basemap software to reload it? My computer of course does not have a serial port either. What a royal pain in the you know what! Thanks for any help provided.

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I have a garmin etrex legend, plain jane unit, practicaly discontinuied due to the serial port connection it requires. The store where I bought it wanted to sell me $100 program to download topo maps on to my unit, which only has 8mgs storage capacity.

 

my questions are 1. is the software worthwhile?

2. is there a less expensive alternative?

3. how much area will 8 mgs give me?

 

I have a Legend and I would not say it is discontinued because of the serial port, you just have to add some additional equipment to upload or download if you do not have a serial port. The Garmin Topo maps are not bad and I feel were worth the money I spent on the program. There is not another alternative although you may be able to find the program in the For Sale section or on E-Bay for less the $100.00. How much are will 8 megs give you will depend on where you are and what you want to upload. I was able to upload a fair chunk of cental and northern New Mexico into my Legend.

The avionics store where I bought mine stated thet they were in fact discontinuing the legend, and gave the serial port as the reason. do you use a usb to serial connector, or is there a different patch cord availible?

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I think Milbank gave you a good idea of how much area you can cover with 8 MB.

 

To see the level of detail you can use the MapViewer on Garmin's site:

http://www.garmin.com/cartography to zoom in on a few areas with which you're familiar and see how useful the maps would be for your uses. The Garmin Topo maps are based on the USGS 1:100,000 series and they share the pros and cons: they're accurate and show lots of the physical features, but they're rather dated with regard to roads (many places 20 years or so) and leave many unnamed. You should be able to get the Garmin US Topo maps new for about $80 (that's Amazon's current price) and less used. Fortunately the Topo maps have no unlock codes to worry about if you're buying them used.

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On the same subject of maps, I lost my base map on my Etrex Legend. Has anyone else ever had that problem? Of course the unit didn't come with a CD when I bought it. Anyone know where I can find the basemap software to reload it? My computer of course does not have a serial port either. What a royal pain in the you know what! Thanks for any help provided.

 

You can update the unit software at garmin.com

I wonder if it would load the map again for you.

 

How did you lose the base map? Are you sure it's not just turned off?

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Player2, I noticed you live in Alaska. I opened up Mapsource where I have City Select 5 - it shows that the entire state of Alaska takes only 7.4 mB if you don't select the routing data. But then your motto at your profile ("What road?") is probably just as telling. In my area in northern Califronia, I get a lot less area.

 

But on the whole, I don't find the maps in my Legend to be particularly useful. I would not make that investment.

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On the same subject of maps, I lost my base map on my Etrex Legend.

Haven't heard of that problem before and the basemap in the Legend is not supposed to be removable by anything you do. Do you see any cities or highways at all?

 

Are you sure it's really gone as opposed to just being turned off. On many Garmins (I thnk incl. the Legend but don't have one to check) you can turn off the display of the basemap using the setup menus. I'd carefully check all the menu options to see if it's just not being displayed.

 

Loading the firmware wouldn't load the basemap data but your problem could still be that something in the firmware is corrupted and preventing the proper display. So I'd also try reloading the latest firmware from Garmin's site.

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I turned on my Legend and can find ways to turn off the maps I that loaded in (off the Map page, select the options menu, and there pick Setup Map), but not the base map. I would suggest calling Garmin to see if they have a suggestion.

 

Thank you for all of the info. I didn't see a place to turn off the base map. I selected restore defaults and that didn't help either. I thought that maybe I ran out of memory so I erased all of my waypoints. Still don't have the base map. I don't remember doing anything to erase the map from this unit. I last used it during hunting season and it worked fine. Weird. Maybe it will be an excuse to get a later and greater unit. Thanks again for all the responses.

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