I had just woken up from a long winter's nap... Erp! Wrong story.

I had just completed Rockdale Swinging Bridge with kennethpruett, his wife Terrie, Erguk, and LostNFound and had to split (not wanting to push my luck with understanding wife!).

I was walking back to my truck, eyeballing my GPSr to backtrack just to make sure I didn't make a wrong turn. I'm walking along, minding my own business and the receiver shuts off.

No problem, batteries must be dead. Usually I get a Low Battery warning well before they dry up completely, but not this time.

Oh well, I should be able to squeeze a few more minutes out of them to get back to the truck. I power up the receiver, and 2 seconds later, the keypad locks up and it automatically shuts off. Weird.

I leave it off for a minute or two and try again. Same exact thing.

Hmmm. This isn't good. I manage to find my way back to the truck and put in fresh batteries. Same thing.

I wiggle the keys in case one is stuck. Same thing.

I put in another pair of fresh batteries. Same thing.

This is very not good.

I pull the batteries for 30 minutes and try again. Same thing. Argh!

I'm not even sure if it will stay on long enough to let me try to 'upgrade' the OS! While I'm reading the webpage, I see some 'if your GPS is locked up' set of keypresses you can use, so I try them. End result: all my stored data is wiped clean (I wish I had backed up more recently than a month ago, but that's better than nothing!) and it _appears_ to be working just fine now.

I'm going to call the Maggie tech support folks today to determine why this happened, how likely it is to happen again, and whether I should send it in for an eval before my warranty runs out (next month, IIRC).

Blah. So while I was trying to find a fix on their website, I was checking out the cheapest GPSr I can buy in case I have to send mine back.

I can't envision being without my GPSr for a few weeks or whatever it takes them to fix and send it back! :P

If the tech support folks mention anything meaningful, I'll update.

Later- AndymanD

PS- and I'm still waiting on their version 4.04 upgrade to stop the unwanted shut-off during EGNOS testing... Sigh.

PPS- I plan to back up much more frequently than I was doing. If you don't back up your waypoints to your PC (and make a backup of that backup and store said backup in a safe place), you're askin' for trouble. Learn from my experience. I thought the OSes in these things were bulletproof. Wrong, oh wrong. :P

Hey Andymand, bummer! If you want to borrow an el cheapo yellow eTrex you are more than welcome to borrow mine if you do need to send yours back. It is nothing fancy, of course, but it would be a good free loaner. Just let me know what you want to do. I've got an extra one from some time ago so it would be no problem. I usually carry it when I travel with the same waypoints loaded in case my Vista does something goofy.

Many thanks for the offer, mtn-man. As soon as I down my grilled chicken caesar salad, I'm giving the Maggie folks a call, so we'll see what's what... -AndymanD

I just got off the phone with Magellan's tech support.

1) What caused this lock-up problem?

[The tech] Ronald mentioned the info sledgehampster kindly shared elsewhere. That is, Eastern states have issues w/EGNOS; version 4.04 is currently on CD but not on website; he's going to request that it be put on the website. He said that 4.04 should address the EGNOS problem.)

I explained that what I experienced was completely different than the EGNOS problem which I have also experienced. (The EGNOS problem basically powers off (some? all?) WAAS-enabled Magellans when tests are being performed on the EGNOS system. Fairly annoying, but a quick power-on makes everything happy again. Unlike the problem I experienced, where I had to clear memory and reload everything from a backup.)

2) Is this lock-up problem likely to happen again?

He said that it's not likely it will happen again. In fact, he had never heard of anyone experiencing the problem I described. He added that if it happens again, I can call them back.

3) Since my one-year warranty is going to expire in a month or so, do I need to send it back as a pre-emptive measure?

He said that's not necessary; if it goes past a year they'll still honor the warranty. He did add that if I felt the unit was not performing properly, that I could call back and make arrangements to send it in.

So we left it as this: I'll use it for the next month or two and if the problem occurs again, I'll call and we'll see about a repair.


I have these weird feelings about this whole mess -- I kind of want the problem to occur again right now so I know the unit is bad and they can repair it, rather than that happening after it's long out of warranty. Sigh...

Thanks for reading my tale of woe. -Andyman

I had a Similar Problem with my Garmin III+. Robo Jr. and I took his jet skis out to try and locate a few caches on lake Lanier. Long story short my GPS got dunked, but didn’t see it as a problem because before we left I checked the manual to make sure that our GPS’s were water resistant (we have the same GPS). The manual said they were water resistant to something like 1 meters for 30 minutes so I didn’t worry to much about my GPS getting wet.

After the dunking my GPS kept shutting off and after awhile would not turn on at all. We ended up not finding any caches at all due to a mechanical failure of one of the jet skis and after we got back the GPS still would not work even with the DC adapter.

I opened up the GPS when I got home and found a little bit of water in it so I left it open over night to dry. When it went under it was far less than a meter and was only under long enough for me to get off the jet ski and wade to shore (had it on a neck strap). Put it all back together the next day, put in fresh batteries and it still would not turn on. So I called Garmin to see about having them repair or replace it, seemed simple enough. They produced a product and claim its water resistant, water gets in it, they should fix it, right? Wrong! Upon calling them I found that the GPS was only guaranteed to be water resistant for 1 year! This was in late August 02, I got the GPS in December 99 so I was way past the unwritten “water resistant warranty”. I argued with them about that not being in the manual but they would not budge on fixing it for free. So I reluctantly paid them the $150 to have it checked out.

That was a long week without the GPS on my dashboard! Got it back, they had given me a new case and antenna, and all of my waypoints were still in it. Looked at the paperwork, every page had “customer stated he took unit apart” on it and the repair notes said there was nothing wrong with it, that they put it in a new case and sent it back. Great I paid $150 for a new case…

Now it still powers off randomly when I am out cache hunting, and there are 2 lines of pixels that don’t show up any more. Blah! Not sure what I’ll get when it dies, Garmin has sort of left a bad taste in my mouth from this and their refusal to offer a base map update with the corrected interstate exit numbers

That really does sound crappy. If the unit's guaranteed to be watertight, there shouldn't be a time limit on that. I will definitely be a lot more careful about getting my Garmins wet after hearing this. (All of ours are over a year old except the Rinos.)

The base map thing burned me too. Using a flash RAM rather than a PROM for the base map data would have added maybe two or three dollars per unit to the cost, it was a ridiculous mistake not to do that. Unfortunately, they're continuing to repeat that mistake, installing non-upgradable base maps in all their new products I'm aware of.

IMO, it's a form of planned obsolescence ... they want to keep you buying new units.

Scott

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Scott Johnson (ScottJ)

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Originally posted by AndymanD:
I'm not even sure if it will stay on long enough to let me try to 'upgrade' the OS! While I'm reading the webpage, I see some 'if your GPS is locked up' set of keypresses you can use, so I try them. End result: all my stored data is wiped clean

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Oooppss! Done similar things myself.
Hate that feeling in your gut while a system restarts and you realize all your data is gone.

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(I wish I had backed up more recently than a month ago, but that's better than nothing!) and it _appears_ to be working just fine now.

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Whew!!! Glad it was not hardware.

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Blah. So while I was trying to find a fix on their website, I was checking out the cheapest GPSr I can buy in case I have to send mine back.

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The lowest prices seem to be on Fry's Outpost.
They have Meridian Green/Yellow's with 2mb base maps varying from $99-$119. I have a Yellow.
{Updated: Just checked and they don't even have the Meridian Green/Yellows anymore. Guess they sold them all for too cheap. They still have Sportraks and Meridian Golds.)

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PS- and I'm still waiting on their version 4.04 upgrade to stop the unwanted shut-off during EGNOS testing... Sigh.

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I read on the Magellan Yahoo group that the EGNOS testing is finished. Don't have the url to the info though.

Glad your still able to 'cache.
If you need a loaner, a co-worker has a Meridian Yellow that he almost never uses. I'm sure he would loan it to me and you could use mine.

Kenneth