Geocaching Australia

I was kinda playing with my ST Map and accidently deleted the Basemap.. ...Does anyone have either the Oz Map ( not colour or pro its 6Meg whilst the Map only takes a 2 meg Basemap) Basemap or the Merigreen WWbaseamp? Please.

TIA
HMAS MB

I don't think the 2Mb Australian basemap is available, and it's not possible to download from a GPS to a PC... As far as I know it's only available from Magellan and I have heard that in accidental cases like this, they will reload the Australian basemap for a modest fee...

It actually can be, but it is a painfull process.

hhttp://groups.yahoo.com/group/sportrakgps/files/

And what Magellan call modest I call profiteering. You need your bill of sale and they still charge about $300. And when you are on a pension $300 is a lot of food to waste.

No... I think if you have proof that the unit was bought in Australia, then they will reinstall the base-map for a much lower fee than that... The $299 charge is only for US bought units and supposedly relates to the map royalties that are due to the government mapping agency...

How did you delete it? I would like to know so I don't accidentally do the same. Please tell.

thanks in anticipation,
clear skies, John

Hi
<p>
Just a general response pointing to a couple of Yahoo! groups which may be of interest:
<p>
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/magellan-gps-users/ and http://groups.yahoo.com/group/magellan_sportrak/
<p>
Also BackpackGearTest.org have just finished six months testing of the Magellan SporTrak Topo 2003 and Magellan SporTrak Color 2003. For those interested you can read the reports at http://www.backpackgeartest.org/magellangps/
<p>
Regards
Andrew Priest
List Moderator - BackpackGearTest.org

If you have a SportTrak Map with the US basemap, can up load the Australian one in as well with MapSend? If you can, will you have both maps or will it whipe out the US basemap?

<font color="blue"><font face="verdana"><b>Hi Snuva,<p>The 'Base Maps and 'Mapsend are two different maps, I assume your talking about Map send as in the earlier version of DiscoverAus?<p>The base maps can be changed from US to Australian but you first need to remove the US one as it is stored in the Magellan's memory. A difficult and time consuming process from what I've been told.<p>Map Send / DiscoverAus is best uploaded to an SD Card in the Magellan and it displays instead of the limited detail base map anyway.<p>There is a site which has all the BaseMaps available it's a 65 Meg download so I haven't tried it to see if the Aus Base Map is on it, so to test it out I'm downloading the file now... will let you know if it has the Aus map on it<p>Cheers TLC

<font color="blue"><font face="verdana"><b>55 Meg down ... nearly there

<font color="blue"><font face="verdana"><b>OK the file does have the Aus land and also the Aus Marine maps on it version 1.01. It also contains the English, North American and Europe Base maps in both land and marine for those interested. <br>PM me and I'll send you the web address.

TEAM LANDCRUISER wrote:<font color="blue"><font face="verdana"><b>OK the file does have the Aus land and also the Aus Marine maps on it version 1.01. It also contains the English, North American and Europe Base maps in both land and marine for those interested. <br>PM me and I'll send you the web address.

But before HMAS MB gets too excited, I assume that this is the archive with only the 8MB Aus basemap?

(If anyone turns up the 2MB one, I'd appreciate a quiet tip-off as well...
I have a thirdparty set of detailed NZ maps on my Magellan Green's SD card, but it's only useful in close-up.)

Yeah I know....I have the WW base map cd with the Merigreen and Aus Marine Basemap for Meridains.

I did some experiments and managed to download my Australian Basemap off my Platinum. Its tricky but not impossible. You use hyperterminal and for the 8 meg took about 30 mins. Its the latest version of the map as far as I can tell. If you have a search though e-mule/e-donkey I have noticed that someone had got it out there. The method that I have read to upload a new internal basemap is to copy it to a SD card and then use one of the hidden commands to upload it to the unit. It will write over the US version if its in there so if you wish to keep that then you would need to download that to your computer beforehand. i havnt tried installing a new map as I bought my unit here and have no need to go rewriting it. The process sounds very simple though so if I needed to I would. I have heard Magellan charges $150 which is a shame as at that price people will have a go at doing it themselves and then the secrects are out in the public domain. The Australian internal basemap is on the chip in the unit and is 8 meg. the marine one is 12 or 16 meg (I'm not shure how big) but is the same unit otherwise. Magellan charges the extra for the marine unit because it costs them more for licencing. The mapsend/discover Australia maps are addons and are loaded onto an SD card. You can use these on any of the unit but when you get to certain zoom levels you will lose details.(close zoom is perfect zoomed out it loses the magor roads) I know of one person that uses his US unit with these and loves it. He has no intension of zapping the internal map but I think I would if it was me.
I use a card reader to load the maps to the SD card as its much faster and I think you would need one to upload the internal map to the GPS unit as you have to copy th map toan SD card and this would be the only way to do it.
the .IMG and .DAT files are interchangable as far as I have read.
One fault with the platinum unit is the compass reading 180degrees out...you can fix it by recalibrating the compass. Other than that they are great units.
There is a yahoo group that discusses all things magellan so go hunting and enjoy it.
If you have any other questions I will try to help but generaly this is most of the stuff I know about it.
My stand on it is buy the correct unit (Austrlian)and pay for the software (Discover Australia)...support the company so thay have a reason to continue development. But I also consider its my unit and that after finding its $150 to reinstall a basemap then of couse I would protect my investment and back up the internal map for my possible future needs if required.