magellan map 330 or meridian firmware download?

[Gu_42]

does anybody have a copy of map 330 or meridian color firmware?

 

I cant find any working links when searching the net

 

i'm trying to update them to fix waas so if anybody has and hacked firmware even better

[robertlipe]

Map330 and Mericolor used similar, but different firmware. The age of these units (~20 years) and the destruction of the yahoogroups archives, which held most of the wealth of info on GPS of this era, have made "classic" info hard to get. (I actually have a copy of the relevant yahoogroups on file...) If you have the version that came with your unit, the relevant part of a doc by Trainlove (!?!) seems to be:

 

1. Open the firmware file, called something like mgold541.hex, with Windows WordPad or NotePad. When you save it be sure to save it as plain text. It is big, about 5 Megs. Search for 23232328 or if that is not seen, due to its crossing a line boundary, then search for 18181818. This is way down close to 90% of the way to the bottom of the firmware. Either will only occur in the one location in the firmware, and within a couple lines of each other, blanketing the area we want to modify. There is a small tutorial on Motorola S-Record files several paragraphs down from here. 

2. Only make the following changes. I will be very specific here, there is space for exactly 6 WAAS satellites, 2 characters are for the Hex PRN number i.e. 7Ahex=122decimal for satellite PRN122 which some know as NMEA ID 35 (but we Magellanites do not care about that). And preceding each satellite are 6 characters, the first 2 always seems to be 00, then the next 4 appear to be the satellites Longitude, in Hex, with special care if that is a West (negative) Longitude. 

Then open the Windows Calculator. Click <view> and then select <scientific> since you will need to use the Hexadecimal mode. So also click that button. Find out what WAAS satellites exist perhaps using celestrak.com/NORAD/elements/sbas.txt, and what ones should be visible from your location by using a satellite tracking program, or a satellite TV antenna positioning program, to process those NASA 2 line elements. Some WAAS resources online are years out of date. One site that is very current (for the USA) is the FAA but Lat & Long of satellites is only valid for the WAAS satellites, the others are moving really fast relatively to any point on the ground. Convert that PRN number from decimal to hex, I.E. In the calculator, when in decimal mode enter 122 for PRN122, press Hex mode and you will see 7A. That 7A is what you are going to change to or from in the firmware. Remove the 'dead' satellites, and replace them with the good 'new' live ones. I detail that in a later bullet. Make no change of the Longitude, perhaps you will need to do so but not yet. Oh, you might see the things like the 7A repeated all over, but that could be part of a Longitude or Address or Checksum so only modify the specific 2 characters that are the PRN number for the satellite. And they occur in pairs, so be sure to not try to modify the last character of one byte and the first character of the next byte, all you will do is make a mess of things.


That all sounds familiar: that generation had a table of hard-coded satellite numbers of the WAAS birds and when the SV numbers were reassigned early in this century, the table had to be hand-changed.

Map330 is pretty far in my past and there's a whole lot of (poorly organized) files in the archives that were mechanically grabbed. If you can send me a believable version number of what you're looking for (2.09? 4.0?) based on what's in your model now, I *might* be able to dig something up. But the above is the general recipe to "fix" WAAS in whatever version you have now.

 

[Gu_42]

I have the data cable for them, but I don't have the PC software to flash the firmware. If I get the PC software, can I download the firmware off the GPS unit? Or will the PC software only allow me to re-flash the firmware?

 

The meridian is running 4.02 and everything works except WAAS.

 

The Map330 is running 2.08 but it keeps freezing (it doesn't get past the boot screen), I was hoping to re-flash the firmware to see if it can be fixed.

 

[robertlipe]

The piece you are asking for that I don't have is the PC code to send an upload to the 330. It was a special utility and I just don't seem to have it. Any other Magellan packrats out here able to help?

PM Sent.

[Gu_42]

I just looked through some old cd's, I have and found Magellan Discover Aus, is this the right software?

 

I'll have to hook up an old pc to try it, my laptop doesn't have a dvd drive in it.

 

edit:

I just loaded that cd onto my computer, I believe it's only for transferring maps to the unit. It mentioned a separate cd to upgrade the firmware the first time I booted Discover Aus.

 

 

Edited October 12, 2020 by Gu_42

[Gu_42]

found it,

 

I went on wayback machine and loaded Magellan's website from 2005. Amazingly it has archived the entire site, including all the attached files. It let me download the firmware for the Meridian and the 330 which includes the Magup software. 

[bensinc]

On 10/12/2020 at 8:26 AM, Gu_42 said:

found it,

 

I went on wayback machine and loaded Magellan's website from 2005. Amazingly it has archived the entire site, including all the attached files. It let me download the firmware for the Meridian and the 330 which includes the Magup software. 

 

This is an old thread now, but any chance you still have that firmware? Archive.org doesn't seem to have the actual files any longer. I scoured every year, but the links are broken!

I also managed to lose my basemap while tinkering, and can't find that anywhere either. I did find an old copy of MapSend Basemap on eBay, I'm hoping that will give me something! I have MapSend Topo from archive.org, but it doesn't do the basemap itself.

[bensinc]

Just in case other people (who for some reason like to play with ancient GPS receivers) stumble upon this, I found it! Here's an archive.org link: https://web.archive.org/web/20170901072131/http://gawisp.com/perry/magellan/MAP330_&_MAP330M-StandardSoftware/

 

Note that archive.org will try to display the .hex firmware files instead of downloading them, but you can just copy and paste the firmware contents into a file.

 

I knew having a Windows98 machine around would come in handy!