After 28 hours I have a whole contiguous US

[+Cacheoholic]

After 28 hours I have all of the contiguous United States of Topo US 2008 map file on a 4gb SDHC memory card. This was with a 3.2Ghz processor computer and USB 2.0 card reader. This was my third attempt at trying this. The others failed after over 30 hours on a 2.8Ghz processor computer. This is a total of 5172 map segments to make up a 3.129gb map file. I pop in the SD card to find that not all the Topo map is visible on my Colorado 300. The screen shot below shows that the southeastern USA is not shaded and is not viewable. I tried to duplicate the same area in MapSource and came up with about 4000 map segments and a 2.5gb file. Also my street detail map, 300mb MetroGuide v8 loaded in the internal memory, is no longer seen. This leads me to think that the Colorado 300 is limited to either 4000 map segments or 2.5gb of maps. I’m leaning towards the 4000 map segment limit. Therefore my conclusion is that a Colorado + Topo US 2008 + 4gb SDHC memory card is not equal to a Colorado 400t. Now don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love my Colorado 300 and I’m awe struck at what it can do compared to my old 60CSx. I just wish I would have bought the 400t instead. The 400t was my first order but I allowed myself to be swayed by these forums since I already had Topo US 2008.

 

[+victorymike]

It took 32 hours for me to load almost all of North America with City Celect v7.00 maps onto my 2GB SD card (1.32GB) via a card reader. But I am running an archaic 300mhz Dell Inspiron 7000 laptop (circa 1996) with Windows XP porfessional. And everything shows up fine.

[toddm]

Nice, I did not have the patience to try this but it's nice to see that someone did attempt it and it now answers the question that you in fact cannot buy say a 8 gig card and put all of topo 2008 and city nav on the card and have the 300 use the data.

 

To some people that's not a big deal, in fact I can put the western half of the US of topo 2008 and city nav in about 1.5gig, but to some, myself included it would be nice to load all of topo and city nav into a unit and never have to mess with uploading and changing maps, that alone may be worth the $100 price difference to some.

[+g-o-cashers]

I have an 8GB SDHC card now and I've been running some experiments.

 

- Loaded the 2.7GB Topo2008 gmapprom.img that comes on the 400t to the SD card and see if works (renamed as gmapsupp.img). It did. This map is known to have about 460 segments (Garmin has confirmed that it is packaged differently than the Topo2008 DVDs maps)

- 5000 Topo v3 (not 2008) segments + 1 Topo2008 segment. The file was 1.6GB and I was able to able to see all of the segments.

 

Right now I'm running an experiment with 6500 Topo v3 segments to see if that works.

 

Its interesting that your experiment fails. I don't have the Topo2008 DVD but it might be worth seeing if 5000 segments of Topo2008 works since 5000 segments of Topo v3 seemed to work fine for me.

 

BTW, how many segments does MetroGuide v8 use?

 

GO$Rs

Edited March 3, 2008 by g-o-cashers

[+Cacheoholic]

I only have 172 MGNA v8 segments loaded because of the limited internal memory. The whole North America is 1070 segments and 1.227 GB. This would probably more like 1.75 GB if you MWizzed it.

 

This brings up another idea. What effect will removing the MetroGuide map have? I cut it off and the Topo still looks the same. I also went back to confirmed that the whole gmapsupp Topo map file was there. The properties say 3.05 GB (3,277,848,576 bytes)? It's not the 3.129 GB that MapSource reported. I guess I'll try it again to see if I get the same results.

[+g-o-cashers]

Here's an update on my experiments.

 

- My 6500 segment img built after around 20 hours. I can load it on my Colorado but I definitely see missing segments. However it wasn't quite as obvious as I was expecting.

 

- After looking closer I realized that my 5000 segment test has missing segments as well.

 

So the segment limit is somewhere below 5000. I'm beginning to doubt my experiment with 4000 so I'll go back and see if I can recreate that file and see any missing segments. Looking for missing segments is little like looking for a needle in a haystack so this isn't going to be a very exact process. I wish I could figure out which segments get dropped, but it seems to be random from what I can see.

 

8GB San Disk Extreme III SDHC card seems to be working very well with the USB 2.0 reader it came with. Very fast and I've got over 6GB of files loaded. The largest single image file I've loaded onto the Colorado is still 2.7GB.

 

GO$Rs

[+IndyJpr]

So the segment limit is somewhere below 5000. I'm beginning to doubt my experiment with 4000 so I'll go back and see if I can recreate that file and see any missing segments. Looking for missing segments is little like looking for a needle in a haystack so this isn't going to be a very exact process. I wish I could figure out which segments get dropped, but it seems to be random from what I can see.

In the case where there are obviously missing segments, what number of segments is listed if you load the maplist back into MapSource? How does it compare to the number you sent? Just curious...

[+Cacheoholic]

That was a great idea! Sure beat running MapSource another 28 hours. I sent my map file back to MapSource and its showing all 5172 segments and 3129mb. It looks like it's all there but the Colorado 300 doesn't display it all.

[+g-o-cashers]

I recreated the 4000 segment map case and it is very hard to tell but after staring at the CO for about 20-30 minutes I can't see any missing segments.

 

My bet is that 4196 segments is the limit!

 

GO$Rs

[+jotne]

I do think you mean 4096 and not 4196, since 4096 = 2^12

[+g-o-cashers]

Yes!, Sorry for the typo.

 

BTW, I thought I would mention that Mapsource imposes a 4GB limit on the size of the img file. If you select more than 4GB of map data you get a warning and have to delete map segments until you get below the 4GB limit.

 

I still haven't tried a file larger than 2.7GB on the CO but you won't even be able to create a file larger than 4GB.

 

GO$Rs

Edited March 5, 2008 by g-o-cashers

[yogazoo]

You guys must really get around! I can conceive of no possible reason why 99.99% of us won't be just fine with the state in which they live. And hey, if I plan a trip somewhere far away, load the maps beforehand (SD card on my 300).

 

Maybe I'm missing something as to the usefullness of loading the entire country. Could someone please enlighten me?

[+Cacheoholic]

My reason?

 

I’m an American…so I want it ALL and I want it NOW!

 

I’m kind of joking, but sadly I think there is much truth hiding in that statement. I used to have a job where one phone call started me packing to go anywhere in the world. Well almost anywhere, never been to Antarctica, but I can’t seem to shake that lifestyle out of my DNA.

[+Paul_Aris]

Coming from an old legend I always have to download maps before I go somewhere because of the 8MB the legend came with. So when I go to the Upper part of the state I load the topo map with those segments. When I go closer to home on the western side of the state I load those segments. Takes 15 minutes of my life. Now I have a 400T coming I will never have to remember or take the time to load the segment even If I go across the country.

[+Cacheoholic]

That brings back memories. I used to keep my 60CS connected to my laptop while driving so I could keep loading and reloading maps to keep up to my location. Boy I loved those days…a donut and steering wheel in one hand and operating the radio, GPS, laptop, etc. with the other hand. Life doesn’t get any better than that! It was a love / hate relationship. I loved it and my wife hated it. I miss that job.