Can You Have City Nav and Topo 2008 both on the Colorado 300 At The Same Time?

[+jwhall3]

I was wandering if you can have both Topo 2008 and City nav loaded on the Colorado 300 at the same time or do you have to get the 400t for that? Thanks.

[+qlenfg]

This topic came up recently on another thread, and someone mentioned renaming one map as OEM something to make the Colorado think its a factory map, and leaving the other named as it was generated. Do a search and see what you find.

[+RFtinkerer]

This topic came up recently on another thread, and someone mentioned renaming one map as OEM something to make the Colorado think its a factory map, and leaving the other named as it was generated. Do a search and see what you find.

 

Not my experience. I have both City Nav and Topo 2008 loaded, along with the base map, on my 300. I can have all selected and see the Topo DEM shading with Navigator streets and routing, or deselect Navigator to see the contour lines and Topo streets, etc. Works a treat.

[+g-o-cashers]

No need to do anything special, the 300 should support anything that 400t can do. If you have City Nav and Topo2008 loaded in Mapsource just select the map segments from both products you want and download to the Colorado. This works the same as other Garmin GPS.

 

You can create different map files on the Colorado but since these are both Mapsource based products there really isn't a reason to.

 

GO$Rs

[+qlenfg]

What are the IMG file names on your unit when you have all those maps loaded? I wonder if MapSource sees the existing map and changes the name of the second one so it won't erase the existing one.

 

Anyway, this was the stuff I ran across on the map names:

 

gmapbmap.img (Base map file, can only be internal)

gmapprom.img (Built in maps like City Navigator, only internal)

gmapprom1.img (Built in extra maps, only internal. City Navigator EU and US need two files)

gmapsupp.img (Maps you download, van be both internal and external on a SD card)

gmapoem.imb (OEM maps, only internally)

[Barrikady]

I have a Colorado 300.

 

I have the following maps loaded on a 2GB card:

 

Part of Topo 2008

Part of MetroGuide North America 8

 

It all works fine. BTW, my MetroGuide has been modified to do routing, and that works perfectly.

 

 

.

Edited February 26, 2008 by Barrikady

[+jwhall3]

Thanks for the relpies so far! I am new to this stuff and I want to make sure I can use both at the same time before I purchase the 300. I will have to learn more about Mapsource; is this the program that runs the maps on the computer and keeps everything together? Thanks again!

[+jwhall3]

One more question. Is buying the 300, Topo 2008, and City Nav seperate in order to get the DVD's to load on the computer the best way to go? Or the 400t and City Nav and save $30. Thanks.

[toddm]

The real issue is what the capacity limit/map segement limit of the colorado? Also I have yet to hear if anyone has successfully loaded 6 gig of maps onto a 8 gig SD card and used it on the 300. (4 gig for topo 2008 and 2 gig for city nav).

 

Certainly you can have 2 gig of a mix of topo and city nav, however no one seems to know yet, if you can buy say an 8 gig SD card for the 300 and load the entire topo 2008 on it (about 4 meg) and the entire city nav (about 2 gig) and if the 300 will work with that much map data. This could be a problem in two areas, first of all total map segments, I think topo 2008 is like 6000 segements if you load the whole thing (not to mention it takes like 25 hours to load onto a card. City nav is not so bad. I seem to remember the 60/76 series had like a 2000 segment limit.

 

Mapsource will not allow you to put more than 4 gig on a card at a time. If not and you want the entire topo 2008 and city nav on a unit without messing with it, the 400t would be a significant advantage because it comes preloaded with topo 2008, and you can get all of city nav on a 2 gig card.

 

It just depends on if you want the entire thing installed, or don't mind doing 2 gig at a time. For what it's worth, I never really needed more than 2 gig of topo and city nav on my 76csx at any one time, however it would be nice to have both loaded for the whole US and just not worry about having to mess with it in the future. Loading a lot of the topo 2008 data takes a LONG time, on my macbook pro it's still a overnight process to load a few states worth of it, and I think the estimate I got was like 12 hours to load the whole US.

 

In addition the 400t I tested out had 1 gig of free space in addition to the topo maps, meaning you could get what half the US of city nav on it without even having to buy a card (though in reality a 4 gig card is what $30-40) so it's not a big savings.

Edited February 26, 2008 by toddm

[+g-o-cashers]

One more question. Is buying the 300, Topo 2008, and City Nav seperate in order to get the DVD's to load on the computer the best way to go? Or the 400t and City Nav and save $30. Thanks.

 

Take a look at G2 and G4 here .

[+jwhall3]

Thanks g-o-cashers! That is a great site with helpful information.

[+qlenfg]

Nope on the large files.

 

Just for grins, I tried to load the entire Topo 2008 map onto a 4 gB SD card the other day using MapSource. Took 26+ hours to compile the maps, then got an error message in MapSource. The 2.7 gB file gmapsupp.img did go on the SD card in the Garmin directory, but the Colorado doesn't seem to recognize it. It takes forever to boot, but the file doesn't show up when you go in to select the maps you want.

 

Will have to try on of the utilities to combine the segments and see what happens.

[toddm]

Probably because the unit sees the headers as the same identical mapset. I tried the same thing with the same result. However if you use topo 2008 dvd it shows up as a separate map, but with a slightly different name.

 

On that note, do any of the utilities to combine segments preserve DEM info?

[+jotne]

Part of MetroGuide North America 8

It all works fine. BTW, my MetroGuide has been modified to do routing, and that works perfectly.

 

And this is why we will not se MetroGuide 2008

[+g-o-cashers]

Nope on the large files.

 

Just for grins, I tried to load the entire Topo 2008 map onto a 4 gB SD card the other day using MapSource. Took 26+ hours to compile the maps, then got an error message in MapSource. The 2.7 gB file gmapsupp.img did go on the SD card in the Garmin directory, but the Colorado doesn't seem to recognize it. It takes forever to boot, but the file doesn't show up when you go in to select the maps you want.

 

Will have to try on of the utilities to combine the segments and see what happens.

 

I've run a test with Topo V3 that created a ~1GB map file with 4000 segments that the Colorado was able to handle. How many map segments in the DVD version of Topo2008? You might be running into that limit.

 

GO$Rs

[+GOT GPS?]

I had the 400t, but it was messed up, but I liked the Topo 2008 on it, but it took too long to boot up. I now have the 300, but find the TOPO 2008, that I loaded on it for the NE USA, kinda crappy, because when you zoom out, all I can see is a bunch of map segment boarders and no detail of that part of the USA. The built-in Topo 2008 on the 400t, was not a problem with map segment boarders. IS there a way of turning off the stupid boarders around each tiny map chunk, by using some processing on the map database?? Also I would like to see data compaction with the Topo DVD, into bigger chunks.

[+qlenfg]

 

I've run a test with Topo V3 that created a ~1GB map file with 4000 segments that the Colorado was able to handle. How many map segments in the DVD version of Topo2008? You might be running into that limit.

 

GO$Rs

 

I think there are about 6500+ files on the DVD. I assume each one corelates to a map segment. Like I said, I did it for fun just to see how long it took and what happened.

 

I'm thinking City Navigator North America NT is gonna be the way to go for me. In an urban caching environment the topo maps are not of much use, especially since the roads are 2-3 years out of date for this area. Just have to figure out how to sneak the purchase past the wife. She likes the Colorado, so I'm OK with that buy.

[+Marky]

I had the 400t, but it was messed up, but I liked the Topo 2008 on it, but it took too long to boot up.

It only takes 21 seconds to boot up a 400t now, with firmware version 2.40