"UNIT CURRENTLY CONTAINS NO MAP!"

[+JN78]

After some great help on how to download waypoints from geocaching.com to the Magellan Explorist 500LE I was able to download a couple. A third attempt did not seem to work so I retried it. Suddenly I got a white screen with the above words plus "INITIATING MAP UPLOAD".

This screen appears upon startup whether on battery power or plugged into the computer, but nothing happens. I even did a reset with no luck.

Any ideas how to get out of this before I convert it to a hockey puck?

[+Woodstramp]

I remember your trying to set this up for a kid or something. Sorry about the new troubles. Also sorry to tell you that the thing is probably toast. It has lost it's basemap. Explorists are prone to this.

 

It might be salvagable if you can find a copy of a 500's basemap and if you can get the thing to file transfer with the PC at start up. If you can get the PC to see it's internal memory, then you can drag in the new basemap file and it will probably work.

[xyzee]

Go to the top of the page and clck on Collection Of Existing FAQs>Magellan>Robert Lipe's Magellan FAQ, then scroll down and find Explorist FAQ, mid page just above the box lines.Then check out the Mapping Software FAQ.

One can get good help from Magellan Yahoo groups, when all else fails.

I've never had to do this, as my SporTrak and Meridian are still going strong.

Lots of good stuff in The Meridian FAQ.

Good luck.

[+JN78]

Go to the top of the page and clck on Collection Of Existing FAQs>Magellan>Robert Lipe's Magellan FAQ, then scroll down and find Explorist FAQ, mid page just above the box lines.Then check out the Mapping Software FAQ.

One can get good help from Magellan Yahoo groups, when all else fails.

I've never had to do this, as my SporTrak and Meridian are still going strong.

Lots of good stuff in The Meridian FAQ.

Good luck.

 

Found it - unfortunately the link to the mapping website appears to be broken and my lack of Russian doesn't help me find any clues of where to go from there.

It did look promising though. Thanks.

Edited November 15, 2011 by Jim&Nikki

[+PeoriaBill]

Over the years I've lost a couple of Magellans due this type error. If this is a "discontinued" non-current model, then your choice from Magellan is to upgrade to a newer GPS. They will give you trade in price on newer model usually at a good discount. I would take the advice of some of the previous posters and try to salvage it, but if all efforts fail, at least you have an option.

[+cwhlam]

A NA basemap can be found in the file section of the Yahoo's Explorist group. It does not say which model the basemap is for. You may have to go back to 2008, when the file was deposited, to find out which basemap it is.

[+JN78]

A NA basemap can be found in the file section of the Yahoo's Explorist group. It does not say which model the basemap is for. You may have to go back to 2008, when the file was deposited, to find out which basemap it is.

 

Thanks to your help and others, I was able to locate and download a basemap to my PC and even transfer it to an SD card. The trouble is that since the "white screen of death" appeared the computer does not recognize the GPS so I can't transfer the file to the internal memory and even with the sd card installed I have no control of the GPS and nothing happens.

So if the PC does not recognize the GPS and the GPS does not seem to see the SD card and none of the control buttons work, then I guess I'm SOL unless I'm missing something.

[vagabond]

If I remember correctly there is a button sequence to go through to load the base map, try the explorist forums maybe someone there remembers the sequence

[+JN78]

While I was waiting for access to the explorist forum, I put the SD card with the basemap into the GPS, plugged the gps into the PC, and started playing with different button sequences.

When I tried holding the "in" button along with the power button the PC suddenly beeped and the GPS came on normally and the PC could read the GPS files.

To test I tried a normal off/on on the GPS and it worked. So next I transferred the basemap to the internal memory of the GPS and removed the SD card. I then disconnected from the PC and reinserted the battery pack and powered in on. I took it outdoors and voila! Everything appears to be back to normal. So now I will keep my fingers crossed.

 

This begs the question: Does this mean that the people at Magellan (who told me it was toast and wanted to sell me a new one) don't know what they are doing and can't support a product, or that they less than totally honest and just want to make a sale rather than provide support?

 

Thanks to everyone for your help.