Just picked this up and gave my Etrex to my son.
Question, I’ve got Mapsource and I’d like to get a 1 gig card (came with 256 meg SD card) so I can put the entire Northeast on it. Do I just copy the files from the CD to the card?
Will the GPS then pick up the additional detail and display?
With my Etrex I could hook up to my laptop and it would display my location and track. Can I do this with the 60CSX.
Andy
Getting loaded
There are all kinds of tricky things about loading large amounts of data to the 60 series. I tried using a 2gig card and trying to put that many maps on didn’t work for me. You can load to your card through a card reader or directly to the gps. Be sure you are addressing the card not the internal memory of the unit. I don’t have my gps in front of me and being afflicted with crs, I can’t walk you through the process. If you know how to attach to your laptop to the 60 to get the jumbo display while running down the road, please let me know.
Working on it
Just got this, and I get obsessed about stuff like this . Give me another day or two and I’ll know this thing inside out.
But in the mean time, if anyone can short circuit this process, please chime in.
Thanks,
Andy
Wha Ho, Andreas
Wish ah’ cood hep yer, but ah’ gots one of dem Garmin Map76 units dat ah’ kin’ not add memory. Ah’ kin upload from my ‘puter using MapSource ok, but ah’ actually use the GPS so infrequently dat ah’ furgit how ta use it every time ah’ do. Ah’ do a great job of gittin’ lost de old fashion way… usin’ me old geologist compass - a Brunton Pocket Transit.
FE
To the best of my knowledge
you cannot just drag the files from the mapsource CD and get it to work in the GPS receiver. I think the mapsource program needs to stitch the maps selected together so you get a seamless map on the receiver. If I am wrong about this, I hope someone will let me know…
What you need to do is connect your GPS to the computer with the USB cable, open Mapsource on your computer, click on the maps tab, select the maps tool in the toolbar, and highlight the areas for which you want the maps loaded. At the bottom of the maps tab info area, it will tell you how much memory will be required to load the maps for the areas you have selected – don’t exceed what your memory card will hold. When you have selected the ones you want, go to the transfer menu and select send to device. You can just load the maps if you want, or you can load up waypoints, etc. One thing to know – every time you transfer maps, the existing set of maps on the GPS will be deleted…waypoints and tracks will not be automatically deleted. Good luck!
Fishdoctor (John)
Free download
You have to download a program called Nroute from Garmin to link the screens. Its been a while and I will have to load my laptop since my old one crashed.
It worked
Thanks Fishdoctor! It worked!
Now, I’ll have try and download Nroute, so I can interface with the laptop while driving.
Andy
I used a 2gb card on my vista hcx so I
Could load city navigator and bluechart for my area and still have room to store routes and tracks. You must put the unit in mass storage mode, that way you are sending the maps diectly to the card. In fact, in mass storage mode all you have is an expensive card reader. The software usually gives good directions for loading. Good luck.
Did you read the manual?
You can download the MapSource manual from
http://www8.garmin.com/products/manual.jsp?product=999-99999-00&camefrom=mapsource
Pages 10 through 16 cover it pretty well. Basically you connect your GPS or card reader to the computer, select the areas of the map that you want to transfer, and then send the maps to the GPS ro card reader. Keep in mind that whenever you send, all the previously existing maps are erased.
Fantastic!
I downloaded Nroute and now the GPS works exactly the way I want it to. Uploaded the maps to it as well and that’s working fine. This GPS picks up the satellites really quickly.
Thanks to all for the help and advice!
Andy
mapset limit
I used to have an etrex legend that was stolen. I got a map60cx and a bigger card thinking I would just go ahead and load the whole USA! Not to be. Garmin told me the unit has a limit of 2025 mapsets…no matter how big your card is. That is still quite a lot of maps!
Map segments.
I have a 60CSX with a 1 gig card
I loaded City Navigator for all of US east of the Mississippi and for selected metro areas
west of the Mississippi.
I also loaded Mapsource Topo for much of the northeast and nearly any place that I might remotely consider hiking or paddling.
With all this I didn’t run into the map segment limit.
If that is a concern, City Navigator V7 has very large map segments so you are unlikely to run into the limit unless you try to load a big chunk of Topo, Inland Lakes, Bluechart or some other package along with it.