Guest Green Rover Posted October 29, 2001 Share Posted October 29, 2001 After happily using a Garmin GPS III+ for several years I recently bought a new Garmin eTrex Vista (the huge memory for MapSource files was a major factor). While I like the new unit a lot, MapSource downloads to the Vista are really SLOW -- more than 2 hours for a 9.4 Meg Roads & Recreation map set -- for example. This may not be the Garmin's fault. I am Downloading from a Macintosh running Virtual PC (Windows 98). The downloads work fine except for the slow 9600 baud (negotiated) speed limit. I mean its really great to have Topo Maps for my whole state in this tiny hand held unit, but gosh, it takes almost 6 hours to download it. So I am just curious what kinds of download speeds other owners of eTrex Vistas are experiencing. Thanks in advance for your comments. ------------------ Astronomer Quote Link to comment
Guest PneumaticDeath Posted October 30, 2001 Share Posted October 30, 2001 As an owner of an eTrex Legend, I can tell you that from Win2K, map transfers happen at 115Kbps... which still means 20-25 minutes of download for 8 megs of data.. but it's a far cry from 2 hours. I suspect that with all the emulation going on, that VPC can't do 115Kbps. Can you confirm or contratict this? Is anybody else getting better than that with VPC on a mac (I'd like to know.. i'm thinking of ditching my windows box and just using VPC on my mac, or maybe the equivilent on my linux box). Best of luck making this work. -- Mitch Quote Link to comment
Guest gstrong1 Posted October 30, 2001 Share Posted October 30, 2001 Don't have a mac, but running 98 SE on my PC, I downloaded Mapsource Roads & Recreation for the whole state of New York, about 10 mb., into my Vista, in 21 minutes. Like PneumaticDeath, transfers at 115,200. ------------------ Gary "Gimpy" Strong Rochester,NY Quote Link to comment
Guest The Scout Posted October 30, 2001 Share Posted October 30, 2001 Make sure your receiver is set to "use with gps off" setting. This helped to speed up my download time. The Scout Quote Link to comment
Guest Schdp Posted October 30, 2001 Share Posted October 30, 2001 Since we are kinda on the topic. Does getting one of those USB converters help download time? I know it helped my Palm communication speeds. Dave Quote Link to comment
Guest Prime Suspect Posted October 30, 2001 Share Posted October 30, 2001 FYI: Later releases of MapSource have a "shut off GPS when completed" option. This allows you to not have to babysit the unit and worry about battery drain. Once the upload is complete, it automatically powers down the GPS. And I've noticed that the newer releases also have support for USB connections. I would like to know if anyone has utilized this yet. Quote Link to comment
Guest peter Posted October 30, 2001 Share Posted October 30, 2001 The USB support is for use with the Garmin memory card USB programmers that come with the Street Pilot III and are available for use with other Street Pilots and eMaps to program the memory cards. This works much faster, but is not applicable to the eTrex series or other GPSRs like the V and Map76 which use internal memory rather than removable cards. Quote Link to comment
Guest Schdp Posted October 30, 2001 Share Posted October 30, 2001 I've seen that people are using the converters to take serial to USB. Not the card programmers that you mentioned. Has anyone that used these experanced better download speeds? Converter Cable Thanks, Dave [This message has been edited by Schdp (edited 30 October 2001).] Quote Link to comment
Guest peter Posted October 30, 2001 Share Posted October 30, 2001 The serial port on the GPS V and other recent Garmin GPSRs is limited to 115200 baud. Whether the data gets there directly from an RS-232 port on the PC or from a USB port that is then converted to RS-232, you can't increase the maximum speed of the port on the GPSR. Quote Link to comment
Guest gbois Posted October 30, 2001 Share Posted October 30, 2001 If Green Rover is using a Macintosh, he/she is using a USB to serial adapter. This does not, however, indicate how the adapter would work on a WinTel platform. For lengthy downloads, it would be nice to have an external power source (other that the cigarette adapter). BTW, it takes me a little over an hour to download 20MB+ on a WinTel system. Quote Link to comment
Guest Green Rover Posted October 30, 2001 Share Posted October 30, 2001 get a clear answer from the VPC Tech Support people -- maybe a newer version runs faster. BTW, I have updated the Vista OS to 2.21 (the newest) so I've got the new Geocache and Geocache Found ikons and the other neet new features and accessories. Meanwhile, I don't have to worry about using up batteries while downloading my maps. I've got a 12 volt emergency starter battery (about $50 at Sam's Club) which I also use when I'm updating the software on a computer controlled Telescope. It would probably power the Vista for about a year -- so no battery worries and the map downloads do work so I'll just plan to do my big map downloads overnight. So thanks again for all the input. If I discover a faster way to do this stuff I'll pass it along. ------------------ Astronomer Quote Link to comment
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