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Montana 680 caches showing after all deleted.


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Hi.

I have a Garmin Montana 680.  It has about 60 or so caches on it that I can't find to delete.  I have removed the SD card.  I have cleared all from Basecamp My Selection.  When I connect the unit to the PC via Basecamp, I can see the unit.  If I click on it NO caches show up.  When I disconnect and operate the unit stand-alone, there are these 60 or so caches on it.

 

Where are they being stored?  I want to remove them completely.  

Anyone know??  I'm confused.

Thanks

Hoges

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> Garmin's BaseCamp does not know anything on Garmin's own GGZ file format. :rolleyes:

Bwaaahahaha. It's not easy being me. :-) It's a bit funny that for over 15 years, I (via GPSBabel) have supported more combinations of their file formats, hardware, and operating systems than they have.

Thanx for the good help on4bam.

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7 hours ago, robertlipe said:

> Garmin's BaseCamp does not know anything on Garmin's own GGZ file format. :rolleyes:

Bwaaahahaha. It's not easy being me. :-) It's a bit funny that for over 15 years, I (via GPSBabel) have supported more combinations of their file formats, hardware, and operating systems than they have.

Thanx for the good help on4bam.

This is SOP at Garmin.

 

Garmin never finish any product before abandoning it and their users for something new (which will also never be completed). Every Garmin GPSr I own still has significant issues that were never resolved by Garmin software engineers. And this is not limited to their hardware, but also extends to BaseCamp, which has also been abandoned (other than a recent update to remove many features and comply with new EU laws) while, for example, never having GGZ support their GPSr units do, making the software woefully useless for so many users.

 

This has been the way they do business for at least the past 15 years. As a Garmin customer/user, you just have to know that 'It will never be right', and you must accept that their products are always only half finished.

Edited by Atlas Cached
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I agree with that assessment, Atlas Cached. There is no doubt they're an old school hardware company; once Model+1 is announced (it doesn't have to even ship...) Model gets ignored. There are bugs and usability issues that have been with us so long they're approaching voting age and they're just not getting fixed. It's evident in their software, too, where Mapsource, Basecamp, and a few others have come and gone, often with poor compatibility even across versions of an app, let alone app renames, leaving folks like GPSBabel (that's me for our new readers here...) to fill in the gaps of people trying to get their own collections of data across programs.

I've thought for so long that what they needed was some competition and I hoped that the Mitac iteration of Magellan would be it, but every attempt in the market has never gotten even a fraction of any market share before they (have to?) give up. Compared to the PND market, the outdoor - and geocaching specifically - markets are small so it's unfortunate that one maker so completely dominates this space. In ten years, we've seen what economy of scale and modernization have done for mobile phones but we've seen only minor changes in the hardware in this market. It's like they're so insistent upon repackaging the free government-collected Topo data into $89 map updates they they keep building $600 handhelds just to sell those updates. Twenty years ago, 30 GB of data for maps was a lot and now it's just not. They've gone from building their own receiver circuits to buying commodity stuff. (Adafruit, Sparkfun, Mouser, etc. sell pretty much the "hard" part of GPS receivers these days...for tens of dollars.) There's just a pressure each year to change the model number slightly so you have something new for the trade show market circuit that the "old" units get left in the dust, never minding that a five or even ten year old handheld at this point really isn't *that* different in capability at the software level.

This industry really has lost its way.

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UPDATE.  Now I have a different issue.  Doesn't appear to be a huge problem but just curious.  When I connect my unit and open Basecamp, I get "

There was a problem communicating with Montana......blah blah blah.

Then

An error occurred while reading  Garmin/GPX/Garmin Waypoints.gpx

 

Any ideas what this means and should I give a rats'?  Is it just having a tantrum?

Second, Garmin have told me they recommend Sandisk MicroSD.  Ok, so I bought one.  Now I notice there's already 7Gig of space on the internal memory.  Is there a need for an external card and if yes what do I direct to the card.?

 

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I only use basecamp to download my tracks and WPs or upload WPs to my Oregon 600 so no experience with either Montana or loading caches.

 

As for the SD card, i use one in my Oregon but only load OSM maps on it as to leave enough memory to load caches/POI's (via GSAK using Garminexport macro).

As long as you don't load (a lot or big) extra maps there's no need for an extra card. You only need to be careful when loading extra maps to internal memory not to use the same default name of the map so you don't overwrite the original.

 

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4 hours ago, hoges in wa said:

UPDATE.  Now I have a different issue.  Doesn't appear to be a huge problem but just curious.  When I connect my unit and open Basecamp, I get "

There was a problem communicating with Montana......blah blah blah.

Then

An error occurred while reading  Garmin/GPX/Garmin Waypoints.gpx

 

Any ideas what this means and should I give a rats'?  Is it just having a tantrum?

Second, Garmin have told me they recommend Sandisk MicroSD.  Ok, so I bought one.  Now I notice there's already 7Gig of space on the internal memory.  Is there a need for an external card and if yes what do I direct to the card.?

 

What I am about to repeat has been discussed here (and other places) so many times I can not count, so you can search if you want to confirm the information.

 

Certainly, you do not need to use the uSD card if you have all that free space on your GPSr, if you are not going to load more files than the space available, but:

 

One of the most common issues people have in the field is a non-responsive unit due to a corrupted GPX file, and occasionally other files the user downloads to the GPSr.

 

This is not a big deal, all you have to do is remove recently added files until the unit begins responding again to restore proper function.

 

The issue is, if the files are in the internal memory of the GPSr, you have to connect it to a PC and get it into forced mass storage mode before you can access and remove those files. This is not always easy, and on occasions has been impossible, potentially bricking your GPSr. It happened to me with an Oregon 550t once, had to have the unit replaced.

 

Now, if you have all your maps and geocache files etc. loaded on the uSD card, in the field, you can simply remove the uSD card and reboot the GPSr and you will at least have a working unit until such time you can get back to a PC where you can try to determine what file on the uSD card is the problem. This way, you still have a working GPSr out in the field instead of a paper weight, which is what you get when all your data is stored on the device itself.

 

The GPSrChive > Montana > Software page lists some great software titles you may want to use to manage data on your Montana GPSr.

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Thanks for all the tips.  Went out yesterday and the unit decided to lose its displayed map once (with no SD card in it).  Turned off and then on all was back to normal.  Maybe it was just overloaded from the work?

 

I went to the recommended GPSrChive for Montana above and had a good read of items of interest.  Bookmarked it now.

 

I still don't know why I get the 

There was a problem communicating with Montana......blah blah blah.

Then

An error occurred while reading  Garmin/GPX/Garmin Waypoints.gpx

 

error when I connect to Basecamp.  Once I hit anything else, the error goes away and all is normal.

 

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8 hours ago, hoges in wa said:

Thanks for all the tips.  Went out yesterday and the unit decided to lose its displayed map once (with no SD card in it).  Turned off and then on all was back to normal.  Maybe it was just overloaded from the work?

 

I went to the recommended GPSrChive for Montana above and had a good read of items of interest.  Bookmarked it now.

 

I still don't know why I get the 

There was a problem communicating with Montana......blah blah blah.

Then

An error occurred while reading  Garmin/GPX/Garmin Waypoints.gpx

 

error when I connect to Basecamp.  Once I hit anything else, the error goes away and all is normal.

 

I have more than a  dozen Garmin GPSr units, and they ALL do that when BaseCamp is opened. I just learned to ignore it as BaseCamp development has all but ceased. BTW, there is also a BaseCamp wiki at GPSrChive as well, if you didn't already see that.

 

The mapping anomaly you report can be caused by a handful of different scenarios.

 

Did you check all your map settings to see if the map you were using was disabled, or another map that covers it was accidentally enabled? The Montana doesn't have a way to turn the screen off and disable all inputs, and I frequently find my Montana units getting settings changed after putting it in a pocket even just for a couple minutes. This is one of many reasons I prefer to use my Oregon 6x0 and 7x0 units when out hiking etc. My Montana units are now just used in my side by side (dash mount).

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56 minutes ago, jpd43 said:

My buddy has a Montana 680t and he has a bunch of "Found" caches that he wants to get off the device. How do we clear those?

 

Depends on how they are loaded on the device.

 

If 'Found' geocaches are loaded as GPX or GGZ files, the GPX/GGZ file simply needs to be removed from the GPSr or microSD card.

 

If they have logged many of these with the Montana GPSr, there are a couple text files found in the Device:\Garmin\ directory that also contain the geocaching log history:

 

geocache_visits.txt and geocache_logs.xml

 

Removing these files will clear this information during the next device reboot.

 

See GPSrChive > Montana 6x0 > Operation > Files & Folders for more information!

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