Expandable Memory In Magellan Meridian Platinum

[+geospyder]

What is the largest SD memory card that you have used in your Magellan Meridian Platinum? Largest I see for sale (not that I would buy it there) on the Magellan site is 64meg. What if I wanted to go higher like 128meg, 512meg or even a 1 gig card, would it work?

[+Mr Lost]

You can use one as big as they make. The largest SD card I have seen is a 1 gigabyte card, which the Magellans would use just fine. the limitation you are going to run into is the size of the maps that the mapping software will allow you to load onto it. The workaround here is just to make as many regions as you can that will fit onto your card. I would reccomend overlapping them slightly to provide best coverage. Essentially, there is no limit to the memory capacity of these units. It is THE reason I chose them over the garmins. If Garmin units had SD capability, I would buy one.

 

Oh, and I use a 256 meg card in mine...

Edited April 20, 2005 by Mr Lost

[+embra]

I have heard confirmations of people using 1G cards in Meridians. SwissTeam said he had a 2G in his 500.

[+Marcie/Eric]

I have 512 megs in my Meridian Gold. But you should never need that much unless you're zig-zagging the entire US. I have the top half of California, and it's less than 25 megs.

Edited April 20, 2005 by Marcie/Eric

[+geospyder]

Thanks for the replies.

 

Sounds like the limitation is the size of each region (16meg) and the number of regions I can load at one time (4). Is this correct? But the work around is to do multiple loads - like 4 regions and then another 4 regions?

 

Next month I'll be in Europe and I'd like to have the Europe Street maps for the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. Guess I have some experimenting to do to see the best fit.

[tiber]

1GB worked in my Meridian Color and I also shared that card with my Pocket PC.

 

As far as the map size goes, I'm not entirely sure why directroute limits the maximum file size to 16mb. If you hunt around in magellans directories, you can find map.ini (not sure, doing this at work from memory) and within that file, you'll see a line like map_size=16384. Bump it up and the software will make bigger files.

 

I'll check on this when I get home.

[+Marcie/Eric]

As far as the map size goes, I'm not entirely sure why directroute limits the maximum file size to 16mb.  If you hunt around in magellans directories, you can find map.ini (not sure, doing this at work from memory) and within that file, you'll see a line like map_size=16384.  Bump it up and the software will make bigger files.

I found that the downside to making a huge region is that it: Takes forever to load initially. Then, takes a long time to go from screen to screen when you are scrolling the cursor about. I keep mine under 25. the stock 16MB region is about the size of my county plus a few neighboring ones. (not acceptable)

Edited April 20, 2005 by Marcie/Eric

[tiber]

MAKE A BACKUP BEFORE EDITING THE FILE.

 

Alright, I was close, here's the answer:

 

In your magellan software directory (I have DirectRoute and Topo), find the MAPSEND.INI file. Open this in NOTEPAD. A word processor may mangle the formatting. Find the line Conv_Memory_Size=16384 and change it to something larger. I believe the latest version actually ignores this and will let you make ungodly large regions but don't quote me. To convert a number into MB, multiply it by 1024. So if you have a 64MB memory card and you would like to make single regions that size, take 1024 * 64 = 65536. It would be Conv_Memory_Size=65536. You can't do wacky things like change it while the software is running but you get the drift.

 

Also, on some firmware and MAPSEND software combinations, you can edit \MAP\EXPORT.CFG and change the COPYRIGHT field to match your name.

 

[COPYRIGHT]
1=NavTech
2=All rights
3=reserved.

 

becomes

 

[COPYRIGHT]
1=My Name
2=Address
3=Address
4=Phone Number

 

It'll stay that way so long as no-one flashes the firmware or uploads a map from another PC.

[+gpsjeep]

MAKE A BACKUP BEFORE EDITING THE FILE.

 

Alright, I was close, here's the answer:

 

In your magellan software directory (I have DirectRoute and Topo), find the MAPSEND.INI file. Open this in NOTEPAD. A word processor may mangle the formatting. Find the line Conv_Memory_Size=16384 and change it to something larger. I believe the latest version actually ignores this and will let you make ungodly large regions but don't quote me. To convert a number into MB, multiply it by 1024. So if you have a 64MB memory card and you would like to make single regions that size, take 1024 * 64 = 65536. It would be Conv_Memory_Size=65536. You can't do wacky things like change it while the software is running but you get the drift.

 

Also, on some firmware and MAPSEND software combinations, you can edit \MAP\EXPORT.CFG and change the COPYRIGHT field to match your name.

 

[COPYRIGHT]
1=NavTech
2=All rights
3=reserved.

 

becomes

 

[COPYRIGHT]
1=My Name
2=Address
3=Address
4=Phone Number

 

It'll stay that way so long as no-one flashes the firmware or uploads a map from another PC.

Wow, that sounds great. Topo 4.20 is the topo I'm assuming you're talking about?

Do you think this can increase the region upload size of topo 3D? not that it really needs it because I think you can upload 240 MB regions.

-Jeff