Meri Gold Memory Question

[basher_boy]

I work on the road, and input all my client's GPS locations into my GPS. I input the clients name into the message field. I have some 200 clients inputed right now, and when I try to enter a new name in the message field, it returns an error something like "This field is full." I am using the internal memory, and the information says that my waypoints are only 60% full. I use topo to upload, download the waypoints. I assume that this is some kind of a database error, but I am unable to sort it out.

 

Any Bright Ideas?

[+infosponge]

I have seen that problem as well. The message field comes out of a different memory area vs. the basic waypoint data store. If you have around 200 waypoints with substantial message fields you'll quickly have problems.

I've actually had the waypoint memory get corrupted when adding too many waypoints with messages. This was with the older firmware, so it may not corrupt any more, but you will get the error you're seeing.

If you have an SD card for extended memory, you can create sets of smaller waypoint files and only load in the ones you need at any one time.

[robertlipe]

quote:

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Originally posted by infosponge:

I have seen that problem as well. The message field comes out of a different memory area vs. the basic waypoint data store. If you have around 200 waypoints with substantial message fields you'll quickly have problems.

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I have no inside information on how the firmware works, but my guess is there's a fixed pool of 500 total waypoints and only 200 of them support comments. The lengths of the waypoint names and the lengths of the comments seems to have no impact; it's not like ou can have 203 waypoint comments if they're short. (This 'fixed length table of constant size' thing is pretty common in embedded systems like this.) The breaking point is exactly 200 before it starts dropping them into the buckets that don't have space to hold comments.

quote:

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I've actually had the waypoint memory get corrupted when adding too many waypoints with messages. This was with the older firmware, so it may not corrupt any more, but you will get the

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I saw it just this weekend on two different units with Version 4.x firmware. It starts spewing 0xff characters in the field names.

[+Jamie Z]

The solution to this problem, as Infosponge pointed out, is to save a file of 200 waypoints onto an SD card and then start over.

 

You might group them geographically... or alphabetically, or whatever is easiest.

 

Jamie

[+infosponge]

Thanks for the extra insight. I haven't experimented with the waypoint capacity...I assumed it was set up with a fixed area for waypoint storage and a heap area for the comments.

 

quote:

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Originally posted by robertlipe:

I have no inside information on how the firmware works, but my guess is there's a fixed pool of 500 total waypoints and only 200 of them support comments. The lengths of the waypoint names and the lengths of the comments seems to have no impact;

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[MycoCache]

The manual states that 200 of the 500 waypoints can contain comments. I didn't see any mention regarding the size of the comments. Solution as already mentioned is to save-to-card.

 

-- If life gives you lemons, make lemonade. If life is less kind, grow mushrooms.