Meridian Gold Hangs/Reboots with Large TopoSend Maps

[Guest DesertEagle]

Got the Magellan Meridian Gold last week. It rocks! I was in the Outback Restaurant downtown last night. It maintained sat lock even sitting inside 15 feet away from the windows, pretty wild. Anyways ... Merigold + Toposend is less than stellar.

 

I am running Basemap:

Rev. 2.09 Sep. 28 2001

NAM Land - 1.01

I have a 64MB SD flash card

TopoSend Version 3.0 Copyright 2001

 

When I build up a small set of maps to load onto the flash card everything works fine. But when I load a large set of maps ( 1 map with 22MB, or 4 maps totalling 45MB) the unit will hang when I zoom in to .20 miles or closer. Sometimes the unit will reboot and sometimes it freezes to bad I have to give it the three finger salute (Esc-Enter-Goto) to turn it off.

 

When the unit hangs it freezes with the message "Loading ..." on the map screen and none of the buttons work (even the power button).

 

The largest map I have been able to make that worked ok is 21MB for one region and 40MB for 4 regions being careful to make the individual regions about the same size as each other.

 

I am also had problems trying to read the TopoSend CD disk in all three of my CD readers. One of my CD drives is better at flakey disks so one time I managed to copy all the files off of the CD onto my HD I could do a full install with no problem.

 

I hope I got all the files, I think I did (609MB 639,423,556 bytes, Contains 2,939 files, 107 Folders).

 

It would be nice to have:

1) A working CD

2) The ability to upload with confidence.

 

Anyone have any ideas? Please let me know and thanks!

[Guest ClayJar]

Okay, I've made up my regions:

• 3.92MB Dallas
• 25.1MB Texas
• 17.3MB Louisiana & south Mississippi
• 12.6MB Alabama
• 29.1MB Georgia, South Carolina, parts of Florida

A 64MB SD card (at least mine) is about 59.4MB (technically, MiB, mebibytes, but I think they went off the deep end when they wrote those naming standards, as apparently does The Register).

 

Anyway, so, with those regions, I'm loading 59.2MB (without Georgia) or 59.1MB (without Dallas/Texas) on my SD card, and I'm not having any problems yet...

 

Okay, I'm back from the backyard (had to wait for halftime in the LSU game). I managed to get my Meridian to lock up with the full card of maps. According to an e-mail about this issue (from a cacher) "Magellan

claims to be working on a fix, no projected ETA". I'll be looking forward to the firmware upgrade, but in the meantime, I guess I'll just keep it to one and a half states at a time.

 

[This message has been edited by ClayJar (edited 10 November 2001).]

[Guest bhench]

This is exactly the problem that I'm having! I haven't been able to come up with a good mix of region sizes that will allow the unit to work reliably. It may seem to be functioning okay for a while and then freeze when I zoom or scroll the cursor. When I talked to Magellan, they didn't seem to know what I was talking about and even suggested that 22MB regions are too large! I held off replying to ClayJar regarding my problem with his method of uploading maps until I was certain that it wasn't related to this problem. I plan to call Magellan on Monday to continue my discussion with them - I really appreciate finding out that I'm not crazy or in some sort of GPS Hell!

 

Thanks,

Bob

[Guest DesertEagle]

Awesome! We now have a whole two people with this problem and I am suspecting it is an issue that some people will see and others will not.

 

I am also guessing that it may be related to the actual data loaded onto the flash. Clayjar is down South and I am out west so I know we are loading different map data.

The problem doesn't make the unit unusable, it just limits how much data I can load. Right now I have 31MB of data in 3 regions loaded and used it to find my first geocache!

It was rock solid all day and worked great. WAAS was up and running fine here in northern nevada.

 

The region I have loaded and stable is in 3 regions consisting of the bay area, lake tahoe and deathvalley. They are about 10MB each.

 

But if I make one or more of the regions just a tad bigger ... hangs. I dunno if it has to do with using the flash burner instead of using serial. I would love to see if someone can make an area consisting of all of nevada and all of california with 4 regions. Then try zooming in all the way, panning around, zooming out, going to a different spot on the maps, zooming in, etc. It should fit on a 64MB flash ... just barely.

Maybe I will try it using serial dl.

 

------------------

?What are you guys doing here??

?We?re hunting for treasure!?

[Guest DesertEagle]

more capacity than the Vista I was gonna get at a fixed 24MB so I guess I should be happy. Just wish that it would work as stated in the Marketing fluff

 

At this point in time I think on my unit I have a 32MB limit for a stable set of maps.

My 40MB set worked for a while but eventually it crashed and burned in a blaze of software glory. The closer to the 64MB the more unstable it becomes so your miliage my vary a lot depending on your region size and total map size.

 

My working, totally stable map set is exactly 31,117KB (slighting under 32MB) consists of 3 regions none of which is over 16MB by itself. Lets hope for that fix to be out soon. It would be nice if they could support the 128MB+ flash eventually. Until then my working set of rules for the Meridian is ...

 

1) Total of all regions < 32MB

2) Each regions sized < 16MB

3) which implies using 2 to 4 regions (more

regions may be better).

 

GOOD LUCK!

 

------------------

?What are you guys doing here??

?We?re hunting for treasure!?

[Guest DesertEagle]

more capacity than the Vista I was gonna get at a fixed 24MB so I guess I should be happy. Just wish that it would work as stated in the Marketing fluff

 

At this point in time I think on my unit I have a 32MB limit for a stable set of maps.

My 40MB set worked for a while but eventually it crashed and burned in a blaze of software glory. The closer to the 64MB the more unstable it becomes so your miliage my vary a lot depending on your region size and total map size.

 

My working, totally stable map set is exactly 31,117KB (slighting under 32MB) consists of 3 regions none of which is over 16MB by itself. Lets hope for that fix to be out soon. It would be nice if they could support the 128MB+ flash eventually. Until then my working set of rules for the Meridian is ...

 

1) Total of all regions < 32MB

2) Each regions sized < 16MB

3) which implies using 2 to 4 regions (more

regions may be better).

 

GOOD LUCK!

 

------------------

?What are you guys doing here??

?We?re hunting for treasure!?

[Guest DesertEagle]

Late last night I discovered something interesting. With the 31MB file loaded I looked on the About Menu and it shows:

 

Detail Map:

# of Maps: 4 - Ver. 20

Size 30265562 bytes

Free Memory:

Maps 5%

 

(this is with the 64MB flash in the unit).

With 64MB flash the free memory for maps this should be more like 55% instead of 5%. This is another indication that only 32MB is supported by the Meridian Gold firmware.

With more than 32MB of maps loaded I believe this number gets reported as 0% (doesn't matter if its 33MB or 60MB loaded).

 

This is what I think is happening with regard to the lockups ... and this is only a rough theory.

 

Lets say you have 48MB loaded on the flash.

 

1) About 66% of the detail map data is on the first 0-31MB addressable space. 34% is on the last 32MB of the (potentially) addressable space on the flash.

 

2) The file on flash has an index for the data on the rest of the file. If the data you are going after is in the 0-31MB range on the flash the unit works perfectly. You can zoom into the detailed portion and the meridian never locks up.

 

3) If the data (acording to the index at the start of the flash file) is in past the 31MB and higher part of the flash the firmware either

 

a) Can't address the data and the unit locks up waiting forever for the flash driver to return data ... it never does ... hard hang.

 

or

 

The addressing scheme causes a wrap around effect so that going after data in the 40MB range actually returns data in the (40-32=12) 12MB range ... which is most likely garbage to the higher level data interpretation part of the firmware ... potentially displaying bad data (if yer lucky), causing a reboot (via program crash cause the firmware doesn't handle bad data) or hard hang (if yer unlucky).

 

Now on the meridian gold you have 16MB of base map data (the data you see when zooomed out) If you never zoom into the data past the 32MB limit then the unit may just work spiffy and you THINK you have almost the full 64MB loaded ... everything works just tickity boo until you zoom into the map at a high level detail and start actually accessing that TOPO and POI data that is at 32MB-64MB on the flash (*maybe* corresponding to regions 3 and 4 that you defined with TopoSend).

 

It is for this reason that I think some people may be seeing the problem and may not.

It is also for this reason that the more data past 32MB that is loaded the more likely a close zooom in will end up as a lock/hang/crash. The likelyhood of a lock up progresses in a linear fashion.

 

Data Loaded Chance of crash/hang

64MB 50%

56MB 37%

48MB 25%

40MB 12%

0-32MB 0%

 

Is there anybody out there that is *NOT* seeing freezes at all with a fully loaded 64MB flash? Please post.

 

------------

[Desert Eagle editing this post at 9:40pm on 2001/11/13]

 

BTW, I fixed the problem with the unit reporting only 5% free with a 29MB file loaded. Apparently I had a hidden messed up file on my flash. I could not copy a 40MB file to the flash and it gave the message ... out of space. I did a full format on the flash and the problem went away, now report 55% or so. Serial DL may now work as well, haven't tried it yet but I suspect that won't help a thing with regards to crashing/hanging. If in doubt ... reformat flash.

Oh BTW

 

------------------

P: "Well, while we're waiting, why don't we search for treasure?"

T: "Oh, good idea. Let's search for treasure."

S: "What are you idiots doing?"

T: "We're looking for treasure."

S: "Is that some kind of metaphor for a kind of search that can't be described?"

P: "No, we're searching for treasure."

 

[This message has been edited by DesertEagle (edited 13 November 2001).]

[Guest bhench]

There also may be a problem with individual files that are too large. I created one region that basically included all of Pennsylvania. The .img file was about 27MB, but the unit froze as soon as it attempted to load.

 

Incidentally, the memory indicator seemed to be working correctly and showed 54% available.

 

Bob

[Guest Darkshade]

I saw this problem last week after I got my Meridian Gold and Mapsend Topo (I'm also the one who emailed ClayJar). I tried loading most of New England onto a single map, with nearby portions of the northeast joined as other maps to fully utilize the 60 actual MB of my 64MB card (Many, many years ago when hard drives were measured in megabytes Maxtor decided a megabyte was 1 million bytes, rather than the 1,073,741,824 bytes that it actually is, in order to make their drives seem bigger. Computers still calculate a MB as 1024*1024*1024, marketing people still round down. The rest of the "missing" space is formatting overhead).

 

This map caused the unit to lock up while trying to load the map after initial boot. This was because the Meridian stores your last zoom in level when you power off, and I had been at 100 feet. The lockup will depend entirely on the size of the map in question. On very large maps it will lock up if you zoom to 0.20 miles. On slightly smaller maps (in the low 20s) it didn't lock up until I was at 500 feet. On slightly smaller than that (~18MB) it randomly rebooted itself. I've had good luck keeping map sizes to around 14MB.

 

I talked to Thales (Magellan) tech support a few times last week. They said they had replicated my issue with the 64MB cards using MapSend Topo. They claimed the newest Streets and Destinations software does not have this problem with large maps, and they told me it also supports uploading to a USB SD Card reader/writer. They said they were working on a fix for large maps with MapSend Topo, but had no projection on when it would be available. Since they do sell the 64MB SD Card, it is likely they are expending some effort to make sure it actually works.

 

If you happen to call tech support, ask for Frank, he's the one I dealt with, and the more people who call to complain, the more resources they will throw at this problem.

[Guest Utahbill]

I have encountered the same problem. When I talked to Thales I didn't get any where. They insisted the problem was using a non "Magellan" card.

[Guest Darkshade]

As far as I know, only a few companies actually make Secure Digital cards. Megellan is OEM'ing one of them, and the only one that actually LOOKS like Megellan's card is the SanDisk. Plus their box says they support Industry Standard Secure Digital cards, so if the card conforms to the standard, it should work. They wouldn't admit to me that they were OEM'ing SanDisk, but it's likely Tech Support doesn't know either way. They didn't give me too much grief about using a SanDisk card, but I did have to use the serial connection to replicate the issue with large maps before they would stop blaming the USB SD Card writer.

[Guest bhench]

Darkshade, your mentioning that the unit 'remembers' the last zoom level helped to explain why I sometimes locked up right away. I also found that scrolling the cursor around a lot may result in a lockup as well. What really bothers me about all of this (other than not being able to use my GPS the way I want) is that the only good exchange of info has come as a result of this forum. Wouldn't it make sense for a note to be included on their website that a problem exists and that they are working on it?

 

As has been pointed out (by myself and others) Magellan's technical support seems determined to offer excuses rather than explanations. The use of a non-Magellan memory card was brought up during my call as well, but I happen to have both a Magellan 64MB and a SanDisk 64MB card both of which, of course, exhibit the same problem.

 

While I'm not interested in the new MapSend software, I would be willing to buy it just to see if really does work as claimed. However, if I understand correctly, it will not be released for another month.

 

I suggest that the first one of us who hears of or gets their hands on 'the fix' post the info here.

 

Bob

[Guest DesertEagle]

I concurr with Darkshade about the zooming in and the remembering the last zoom locking it up.

 

Its really sad to see some companies are trying to hide the truth about their nasty little severity 1 bugs. And when people call in to report the problem they get the run around with "uh oh you didn't buy our SD card at 2x the price". Thanks to bhench for buying both cards so we can dispense with that bit of fiction.

 

I am suspecting that there is a political battle going on between tech support (and I have to believe that they really do care about their customers, or else we can all just give up now) and marketing, that doesn't want people to know there is a big problem. It is a shame that some companies still do this kind of thing especially now that they really can't get away with it. Eventually someone posts to Groundspeak ... to USENET ... creates a webpage ... emails to the various retail stores selling the product ... and the word gets out anyways. Then going to the company web site > tech support page we find ... NOTHING. It doesn't bode well for this problem and ones in the future.

 

Anyways. TheGPSstore I bought from is sending me another MapSend Topo. Hopefully I will be able to read this one in *ALL* my CD drives.

I have sent email off to them letting them know about the problem so they can make ethical decisions when talking to their customers and taking orders for the Magellen Gold. Even better than applying pressure to tech support is pressure coming in from the retailers to Sales & Marketing. I encourage everyone to let their retailer know about the problem and get them to pass it on. As a customer, if Magellen doesn't seem to want to recognize the problem then it doesn't seem that it will get fixed.

 

------------------

P: "Well, while we're waiting, why don't we search for treasure?"

T: "Oh, good idea. Let's search for treasure."

S: "What are you idiots doing?"

T: "We're looking for treasure."

S: "Is that some kind of metaphor for a kind of search that can't be described?"

P: "No, we're searching for treasure."

[Guest bhench]

I also sent email to the GPSStore and to Magellan. I wanted to apprise the GPSStore that the problem exists and I wanted to let Magellan know how disappointed I am that this forum has become the only source of information about the problem.

 

Those of you who have found a map size that works reliably - does the size refer to the total of all the regions being uploaded or to each individual region? I'm currently experimenting with multiple smaller regions to see what I can get away with.

 

Bob

[Guest Utahbill]

Am I to understand that the copy of Mapsend TopoI just purchased for almost $100. Will have a new version released in the very near future? I better get a sweet upgrade deal.

[Guest ClayJar]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Darkshade:

(Many, many years ago when hard drives were measured in megabytes Maxtor decided a megabyte was 1 million bytes, rather than the 1,073,741,824 bytes that it actually is, in order to make their drives seem bigger. Computers still calculate a MB as 1024*1024*1024, marketing people still round down. The rest of the "missing" space is formatting overhead)

---

Okay, one little thing: We interrupt this thread for one little wacky detail: 1024*1024*1024 is actually mebibytes, not megabytes. And now back to your regularly scheduled thread.

[Guest ClayJar]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Utahbill:

Am I to understand that the copy of Mapsend TopoI just purchased for almost $100. Will have a new version released in the very near future? I better get a sweet upgrade deal.

---

I would say that the patch(es) to fix the problems would quite certainly be a free download. It's their bug, and while their license probably says "no warranty", they know that they'd have H-E-double-hockeysticks to pay in suits if they tried to pull one on their most technically advanced GPS users. (We probably know more about this than most of Thales Navigation's employees.)

 

So, I guess we should give them a little while longer before mirroring this thread read-only to some other web servers and submitting it to Slashdot... Oh, did I say that?

 

Okay, I just made my call to Thales Navigation. The poor tech that answered the phone (I've been there, I feel for them) had to call me back, but he did and he let me know that (1) I need to cut my regions down, (2) they know of the problem, (3) they're working on it, (4) he can't give any ETA -- I'm also a programmer of sorts, so I understand that too, (5) it should be on the site once it's done, and (6) um, I thought I had one more thing... oh, well, I guess I forgot. (Incidentally, he didn't ask anything about the brand of card, upload style, favorite color, difference between swallows of different lineages, or anything else, so I'd say they really do know of the problem and are working on the right one. )

 

[This message has been edited by ClayJar (edited 13 November 2001).]

[Guest ClayJar]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Utahbill:

Am I to understand that the copy of Mapsend TopoI just purchased for almost $100. Will have a new version released in the very near future? I better get a sweet upgrade deal.

---

I would say that the patch(es) to fix the problems would quite certainly be a free download. It's their bug, and while their license probably says "no warranty", they know that they'd have H-E-double-hockeysticks to pay in suits if they tried to pull one on their most technically advanced GPS users. (We probably know more about this than most of Thales Navigation's employees.)

 

So, I guess we should give them a little while longer before mirroring this thread read-only to some other web servers and submitting it to Slashdot... Oh, did I say that?

 

Okay, I just made my call to Thales Navigation. The poor tech that answered the phone (I've been there, I feel for them) had to call me back, but he did and he let me know that (1) I need to cut my regions down, (2) they know of the problem, (3) they're working on it, (4) he can't give any ETA -- I'm also a programmer of sorts, so I understand that too, (5) it should be on the site once it's done, and (6) um, I thought I had one more thing... oh, well, I guess I forgot. (Incidentally, he didn't ask anything about the brand of card, upload style, favorite color, difference between swallows of different lineages, or anything else, so I'd say they really do know of the problem and are working on the right one. )

 

[This message has been edited by ClayJar (edited 13 November 2001).]

[Guest bhench]

Well, guys, it does seem that 15MB is about the upper limit for operating with reasonable assurance of no lockups. It makes you wonder if they ever ran any tests with maps larger than 16MB or memory cards greater than 16MB.

 

Bob

[Guest DesertEagle]

BHench, I am currently running a stable map with 29MB in total. It consists of 4 regions that are from 7.2MB to 7.5MB in size.

If you just make one big region of 29MB you will crash and burn. Since one big region is bad I went to the other extream and always use the maximum 4 regions. I suspect there is a 16MB limit per region.

 

Currently I am dealing with the 16MBregion/32MBtotal limitation by creating a whole bunch of adjacent 7.5MB regions and just marking/sending the 4 that I want to use. BTW it seems that the file doesn't have to stricty be named DETAIL00.img. I am having luck getting it to recognize and load DETAIL00.REBYYOAZ.IMG (stands for Reno, Bay, Yosemite, Arizona - my 4 current regions).

I save all the DETAIL00 files on my HD and load them as needed. The ones that crash or hang I mark DETAIL00.DESCRIPTION.HANG.img

 

If you can't get four 7.5MB regions to work, let me know which regions you are trying to create and their sizes and I will try to reproduce it.

 

 

------------------

P: "Well, while we're waiting, why don't we search for treasure?"

T: "Oh, good idea. Let's search for treasure."

S: "What are you idiots doing?"

T: "We're looking for treasure."

S: "Is that some kind of metaphor for a kind of search that can't be described?"

P: "No, we're searching for treasure."

[Guest DesertEagle]

BHench, I am currently running a stable map with 29MB in total. It consists of 4 regions that are from 7.2MB to 7.5MB in size.

If you just make one big region of 29MB you will crash and burn. Since one big region is bad I went to the other extream and always use the maximum 4 regions. I suspect there is a 16MB limit per region.

 

Currently I am dealing with the 16MBregion/32MBtotal limitation by creating a whole bunch of adjacent 7.5MB regions and just marking/sending the 4 that I want to use. BTW it seems that the file doesn't have to stricty be named DETAIL00.img. I am having luck getting it to recognize and load DETAIL00.REBYYOAZ.IMG (stands for Reno, Bay, Yosemite, Arizona - my 4 current regions).

I save all the DETAIL00 files on my HD and load them as needed. The ones that crash or hang I mark DETAIL00.DESCRIPTION.HANG.img

 

If you can't get four 7.5MB regions to work, let me know which regions you are trying to create and their sizes and I will try to reproduce it.

 

 

------------------

P: "Well, while we're waiting, why don't we search for treasure?"

T: "Oh, good idea. Let's search for treasure."

S: "What are you idiots doing?"

T: "We're looking for treasure."

S: "Is that some kind of metaphor for a kind of search that can't be described?"

P: "No, we're searching for treasure."

[Guest bhench]

DesertEagle, I tried your 4 smaller regions approach with mixed results. I was able to zoom in and out okay but the first time I tried scrolling the cursor around the screen, the unit locked up. However, the next time I turned it on I was able to zoom and scroll - so now I don't know what to think. I basically chose a point in the middle of PA and drew regions to the NE, SE, SW and NW. In some cases the regions extended well beyond the PA borders but I limited each region to between 7MB and 7.5MB. I ended up with about a 28.5MB image file. Are we having fun yet?

 

Bob

[Guest DesertEagle]

I tried making the 4 PA regions. 7.4 to 7.5MB each. Had problems with the South East region. When I zoomed in really really quick and then panned the cursor around it hung. The 3 other regions were fine. And even the SE region would work if I gave it time to think between button presses.

 

I went back to my 29MB Reno, Bay, Yosemite, Tuscon regions and tried to reproduce the problem. I really had to try hard to break it ....

Hammering the zoom in key really fast and then hitting pan side to side before it had a chance to catch up from the zoom in. If I just used it normally I never see it hang or crash.

[Guest bhench]

DesertEagle, of course it would be the SE quadrant that would exhibit a problem, it's my home base. Actually, I wonder if the problem is due to the increased detail required by Philadelphia? Many thanks for taking the time to check out my regions - I have several computers here, at least one of which is a P4-2GHz, and it still amazes me how long it takes to create the .img files. I have been following your suggestion of not pushing the unit too quickly and it does seem to be stable. I'll try this out for a while and see how it goes.

 

Bob

[Guest alexm]

I don't know if this is any consolation or not...

 

I just ordered my merigold today, complete with mounting bracket, power cable, and mapsend topo. Not 2 minutes after I placed my order at cyber-marine, the guy called me and stated that there was a problem with my order.

 

He could ship the merigold, but not the other stuff. The brackets and cables aren't released yet, and there's something about the Topo CD that he can't get any more until magellan updates it (no ETA on either).

 

I'm guessing that means a patch is defintely in the works!

[Guest DesertEagle]

B SD card reader/writer then someone might volunteer to make you up one small map until you can get a working Topo Send CD.

 

SD cards and USB SD card reader/writers can be had at www.buy.com

[Guest ClayJar]

Actually, since alexm lives so very close to me, I could even stop by with a laptop when I do that lovely multi-cache in Lafayette.

[Guest ClayJar]

Actually, since alexm lives so very close to me, I could even stop by with a laptop when I do that lovely multi-cache in Lafayette.

[Guest alexm]

Depending on how long this "fix" takes, I may just have to take you up on that.

 

Really though, I don't think that pulling the CD off the market is the way to go.

 

They've just created a black market for folks who cannot wait for the "fixed" CD and probably lost quite a few sales in the process.

 

Next thing you know, we'll be seeing pirated copies of mapsend topo 1.0 showing up in caches all around the country (hint! hint!)

 

...

alexm

[Guest alexm]

Depending on how long this "fix" takes, I may just have to take you up on that.

 

Really though, I don't think that pulling the CD off the market is the way to go.

 

They've just created a black market for folks who cannot wait for the "fixed" CD and probably lost quite a few sales in the process.

 

Next thing you know, we'll be seeing pirated copies of mapsend topo 1.0 showing up in caches all around the country (hint! hint!)

 

...

alexm

[Guest ClayJar]

Hehe... an SD card cache... you stop by the front counter and turn in an SD card, and they give you an SD card with the maps for the area.

[Guest ClayJar]

Hehe... an SD card cache... you stop by the front counter and turn in an SD card, and they give you an SD card with the maps for the area.

[Guest Katchoo]

We could put the CD in "very virtual" caches (on the internet) for those in need...

If enough people participate, everyone will only have to upload a small portion of the CD. This will require a fair bit of coordination, but I'll volunteer to do that.

 

If you're interested, contact me

 

Lots o' Fun

Katchoo

[Guest prv8eye]

quote:

---

Originally posted by alexm:

Next thing you know, we'll be seeing pirated copies of mapsend topo 1.0 showing up in caches all around the country (hint! hint!)

alexm

---

 

Of course this would be wrong. But with the obscene price charged for Mapsend Topo even AFTER a customer pays hundreds of dollars for the receiver, it would be hard to feel guilty about it.

Manufacturers certainly have the right to charge whatever they wish. That's the American way. The cost of an item never justifies stealing it.

I'm only saying that I deeply RESENT the high price of the carrot when we already payed so much for the stick.

I can afford to pay the current retail price for Topo but I would feel like a sucker for doing so. I know it sounds corny but "it's the principal of the thing."

 

Gus Morrow

Oceanside, CA

[Guest prv8eye]

quote:

---

Originally posted by alexm:

Next thing you know, we'll be seeing pirated copies of mapsend topo 1.0 showing up in caches all around the country (hint! hint!)

alexm

---

 

Of course this would be wrong. But with the obscene price charged for Mapsend Topo even AFTER a customer pays hundreds of dollars for the receiver, it would be hard to feel guilty about it.

Manufacturers certainly have the right to charge whatever they wish. That's the American way. The cost of an item never justifies stealing it.

I'm only saying that I deeply RESENT the high price of the carrot when we already payed so much for the stick.

I can afford to pay the current retail price for Topo but I would feel like a sucker for doing so. I know it sounds corny but "it's the principal of the thing."

 

Gus Morrow

Oceanside, CA

[Guest hazard]

Kaaza, Morpheus is great for this kind of thing........

quote:

---

Originally posted by Katchoo:

We could put the CD in "very virtual" caches (on the internet) for those in need...

If enough people participate, everyone will only have to upload a small portion of the CD. This will require a fair bit of coordination, but I'll volunteer to do that.

 

If you're interested, contact me

 

Lots o' Fun

Katchoo

---

[Guest alexm]

quote:

---

I can afford to pay the current retail price for Topo but I would feel like a sucker for doing so. I know it sounds corny but "it's the principal of the thing."

---

 

Talk about feeling like a sucker. I paid for the software, the mounting bracket, power cord, and the Meridian Gold. I truly understand now why they called it "gold" and not just "a bit pricey" .

 

So far, I've managed to morph my 315/320/330 power cable and vehicle mount to 'accept' the meridian.

 

Now all I need to do is figure out somehow to make my computer 'accept' my non-existent topo cd.

 

I'm chomping at the bit to play with this thing never having used a mapping receiver w/software before....

 

Honestly, if anyone knows where I can dig up some map files or (magellan view-off)ISO image of the CD(magellan view-on), please drop me an email.

 

...

alexm

 

[This message has been edited by alexm (edited 27 November 2001).]

[Guest alexm]

quote:

---

I can afford to pay the current retail price for Topo but I would feel like a sucker for doing so. I know it sounds corny but "it's the principal of the thing."

---

 

Talk about feeling like a sucker. I paid for the software, the mounting bracket, power cord, and the Meridian Gold. I truly understand now why they called it "gold" and not just "a bit pricey" .

 

So far, I've managed to morph my 315/320/330 power cable and vehicle mount to 'accept' the meridian.

 

Now all I need to do is figure out somehow to make my computer 'accept' my non-existent topo cd.

 

I'm chomping at the bit to play with this thing never having used a mapping receiver w/software before....

 

Honestly, if anyone knows where I can dig up some map files or (magellan view-off)ISO image of the CD(magellan view-on), please drop me an email.

 

...

alexm

 

[This message has been edited by alexm (edited 27 November 2001).]

[Guest ClayJar]

quote:

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Originally posted by alexm:

Honestly, if anyone knows where I can dig up some map files or (magellan view-off)ISO image of the CD(magellan view-on), please drop me an email.

---

Hehe... done.

[Guest ClayJar]

quote:

---

Originally posted by alexm:

Honestly, if anyone knows where I can dig up some map files or (magellan view-off)ISO image of the CD(magellan view-on), please drop me an email.

---

Hehe... done.

[Guest ClayJar]

quote:

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Originally posted by ClayJar:

Hehe... done.

---

Done as in I'll trade a 64MB SD card for another, not as in I have an ISO. (I'm not going to give away someone else's product, but I'm not going to let a geocacher that I've actually met stay completely out in the cold.)

[Guest ClayJar]

quote:

---

Originally posted by ClayJar:

Hehe... done.

---

Done as in I'll trade a 64MB SD card for another, not as in I have an ISO. (I'm not going to give away someone else's product, but I'm not going to let a geocacher that I've actually met stay completely out in the cold.)

[Guest Darkshade]

handle. Hopefully this will just be until such a time as they can release a version that will fully support 64MB cards (they promised me more detail on full 64MB support plans next week). The tech support guy indicated the region sizes would probably be limited to 8MB, 4 of which gives you a 32MB map. Supposedly MapSend Topo developed prior to the creation of the Meridian, and they never did extensive testing on it with large SD cards, thus this issue was never noticed. Most likely their software development resources were dedicated to creating Streets & Destinations.

 

They still insist Streets & Destinations will work perfectly well with 64MB cards, but I don't know anyone who has managed to get their hands on it yet. It's possible it may show up in the distribution channel next week.

 

According to a customer sales rep at Magellan, there is a newer rev of Topo out, 3.00b, which according to tech support fixed a different bug in the software. That may have been the cause of any current shipping delays, or simply issues getting product out of Taiwan.

[Guest alexm]

quote:

---

Originally posted by ClayJar:

Done as in I'll trade a 64MB SD card for another, not as in I have an ISO. (I'm not going to give away someone else's product, but I'm not going to let a geocacher that I've actually met stay completely out in the cold.)

---

 

I think I should clarify that also. The ISO image comment was more of a joking-poke at magellan than anything.

 

With ClayHar's help, my little merigold now knows which street it lives on, and how to follow me back and forth from work, so I'm sure it's happy now. And I guess I can live with it until mine shows up at my doorstep some day.

 

Thanks ClayJar!

 

[This message has been edited by alexm (edited 28 November 2001).]

[Guest DigitalFudge]

I would just like to know if this problem affects the Base Maridian Model too.

 

Thanks

Abri

[Guest tenami]

I'd also like to know how hard it would be to just have a couple of 32MB cards and swap them?

 

smaller plates at the buffet table of life?

[Guest ClayJar]

Since the only differences between the Meridian GPS and MeriGold are the basemap size and plastic colors, yes, I'd say it does affect the Meridian GPS as well.

 

Now as for the ease of swapping between two 32MB SD cards... hmmm... one moment...

 

It took me about 22 seconds to swap SD cards (from GPS receiver sitting on the computer desk to GPS receiver back on the computer desk). I could have easily cut five seconds off that if I had the heat on in here (my fingers are fairly numb and stiff, so I fumbled with the second card). If I was actually trying to hurry, I could go much faster still.

 

So, I'd say that it's no problem at all to have multiple SD cards and swap between them. Just note that you have to turn the unit off for the moment (you remove the batteries to get to the card slot), but it reacquires in something like <10-15 seconds. Oh, and I wouldn't put a card-swap boundary right in the middle of a long outdoor hike in inclement weather, but that shouldn't be too hard.

 

Oh, and with an SD card reader, it's terribly easy to have several precompiled mapsets ready to drop onto your card(s), so you can be from e-mail to maps loaded to the car in under five minutes, easy. (Good enough answer? )

[Guest ClayJar]

Since the only differences between the Meridian GPS and MeriGold are the basemap size and plastic colors, yes, I'd say it does affect the Meridian GPS as well.

 

Now as for the ease of swapping between two 32MB SD cards... hmmm... one moment...

 

It took me about 22 seconds to swap SD cards (from GPS receiver sitting on the computer desk to GPS receiver back on the computer desk). I could have easily cut five seconds off that if I had the heat on in here (my fingers are fairly numb and stiff, so I fumbled with the second card). If I was actually trying to hurry, I could go much faster still.

 

So, I'd say that it's no problem at all to have multiple SD cards and swap between them. Just note that you have to turn the unit off for the moment (you remove the batteries to get to the card slot), but it reacquires in something like <10-15 seconds. Oh, and I wouldn't put a card-swap boundary right in the middle of a long outdoor hike in inclement weather, but that shouldn't be too hard.

 

Oh, and with an SD card reader, it's terribly easy to have several precompiled mapsets ready to drop onto your card(s), so you can be from e-mail to maps loaded to the car in under five minutes, easy. (Good enough answer? )

[Guest Donad_Demon]

A Very Large Bump, (and maybe a target for a hamster attack because maybe this was already mentioned somewhere else)

 

Can SD cards be partitioned, so that if the size thing is still a problem, a 128MB card could be 4/32MB's?

 

Maybe a goofy question, but dag-nabit, there it is.

 

Donad

[Guest ClayJar]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Donad_Demon:

Can SD cards be partitioned, so that if the size thing is still a problem, a 128MB card could be 4/32MB's?

---

I'm not completely sure, but I don't think that there is a partition table on the SD cards. It doesn't really matter to Meridianites, since we can have as many separate files on the card as we want (kind of like partitioning).

 

I loaded up a 16MB map of Louisiana, a 24MB mapset of east Texas, a 16MB mapset east of me, and 8MB to the north, all on one 64MB SD card. I just *LOVE* Menu 92!