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Im not sure what happened?


canpaddle

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While caching today something strange happened to the gpsr. It has never happened like this before. First a little background on the unit, its a Garmin ETrex Legend (blue) bought new in Christmas of 2005, so maybe a little old, its never recently been dropped and has stayed dry ever since it got wet about four years ago, and I applied JB Weld around the rubber seals all around the unit.

 

Ive never had an issue with it since the last time when I reported to you here (Forums) of what I called the mystery line leading a go-to track to Kansas, but some of you gave good advice then and that problem has been nullified ever since, thats been several years ago now.

 

Now we are at today...here is what happened this time:

 

Like I said I was caching this morning when all of a sudden the screen went totally blank and a solid thin black line was on the screen from top to bottom appeared.

 

I tried to shut the gps off, but that appeared to not work (seemed I could not shut it off) so I removed the batteries and reinserted them and turned the gps on and everything seemed normal again.

 

I continued on and again for the second time all of a sudden the screen again went totally blank and the black thin solid line appeared from top to bottom. I again attempted to turn unit off, which it appeared to not be able to turn off?? so I removed the batteries and reinserted them again and turned the unit back on which them appeared to be working perfect again.

 

I continued on when for the third time all of a sudden the unit again screen went totally blank, and the solid black thin line appeared from top to bottom. Again the unit would not swithc off, so I removed the batteries, put them back in and turned the unit back on again. Everything seemed to then be perfect once again, I checked the battery power and saw there was still 3/4 power still left, so felt that the batteries were not the problem.

 

Over the course of another hour or so the gps did not act up again, as I kept a close eye on it.

 

So it did acting up in about a twenty minute time period three times in a row. The sky conditions were totally sunny, about mild tempreature so cold or orvercast is not the issue.

 

Any ideas?? Has this ever happened to anyone before?? Thoughts?

 

Thank you all

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I have to ask this. Were you caching in a cemetery? I know mine acts up a lot when I am in a cemetery. Just a thought.

No I actually was up quite high above the city on trails no trees around just the sun in the sky and slight breeze I was caching in northern Minnesota

 

Anyone had this problem before? Im going to be bring my back up gpsr along for awhile from now on just so I can have a spare in case it happens again.

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Those solid lines across the screen are a common symptom of malfunction on LCD units of all sorts. It could be either a hardware (electrical) or a software problem (crash). Since you never had any problems before and probably didn't mess around with the firmware, it's probably a hardware defect of some sorts. It could also be caused by external influence (strong cosmic radiation, strong radio sender nearby) but personally I don't believe that anything could have a significant influence like that.

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Thanks for all the replys so quickly. Im hoping the unit is not going bad. Will be carrying a spare with from now on just in case, but even if the gps doesnt act up again no telling if it ever will, could it ever be trusted to not happen again?

 

What how would you feel about that?

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Exceptfor the thin line my magellan does the same thing occasionally. Always when the batteries are low, so I replace them, and problem solved. This may be the cause but I'm thinking(Due to the line, and not being able to turn it off) it is a loose wire or something on the processor/chip. If it was the display, then you should still be able to turn it off, just won't be able to see what you are doing.

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