Elderly handheld GPS

[eagleswing]

PBO article on repairing old magellan ??

My magellan is a 1996 and was sent back to the factory in 2001 for a battery replacement. i purchased the 12v adapter and keep it charged overnight when i'll be needing it. i seem to recall an article in practical boat owner some years ago. a magellan owner gave detailed instructions on how to replace the battery oneself, as garmin won't do it on the old units. it involved some easy solder work and as i recall the trick was to put a heat - sink clamp ?somewhere? on the magellan, near the wires being soldered, to avoid damage to the internals of the magellan..

anybody with a complete collection of PBO, can you find the article?

thanks

 

[lustyd]

tolhurstorganic,

beware early handhelds chewed through batteries, I think modern ones are better in this respect; my early Garmin handheld ( now backup to a plotter ) goes through 4 X AA Duracells in about 3 hours.

Purely for comparison, my Garmin 62s will last around 30 hours on 2 AA batteries as long as you're not constantly looking at the screen. If you are constantly looking at the screen then battery life is the least of your worries

 

[Auntie Podes]

A Magellan 315 or 320 "finds" itself quite quickly!

My Magellan 320 "loses itself" only if the battery is stuffed.
To allow it to "find itself" QUICKLY (a mere couple of minutes) simply input your current lat/long, approx will do, then it knows which satellites to find and, in no time at all, it will tune in to them.
Obviously it has to be in a position to pick-up the sat's signals.

 

[Bi111ion]

I know this is an old thread but someone might look with the same problem. I have a Magellan Pioneer over 20 years old. It suffers from the GPS 10 bit week roll over problem and displays a data that is 1024 weeks ( about 19.7 years) in the past. So I think if you set the date and approx location when it cold starts you should set this date otherwise it looks for the wrong sats. I expect many of us have an ld hand held gps wrapped in foil against a lightening strike, or in a grab bag so this trick might help. For easy arithmetic try the www.dateandtime.com web site as it has a handy "subtract so many weeks from date" function. Its a shame Magellan dont have a firmare upgrade as these unis are incredibly tough. Make sure you put the batteries in the right way around as the connectors on one are reversed. This can kill them (guess how I know). Fortunately they can be found for £20 or £30 second hand.

 

[DanTribe]

I seem to remember a quirk of my early Magellan where it seemed to doze off and lose contact, then suddenly realise it was miles away and show us doing massive speeds to catch up.

 

[Refueler]

I have a really old Magellan .. with the pivoting antenna ...

As other said - it needs to be left on to update its almanac ... I had to leave mine on for at least a day ...

That reminds me - I need to do it again !! Its been out of use for too long.

Some early ones of same marque would not update after the Leap Second issue ... but luckily they are only the very early few.

 

[Jamie Dundee]

I had a Magellan 2000 I left on the top box of my bike leaving a b&b in Serbia c2003. If anyone found it can you pm me please ?

 

[PetiteFleur]

My previous boat had a Magellan 1000 model I think. with a large chunky swing out antenna on the side. Had, I think 8 x AA batteries which only lasted about an hour so was always wired into the boats battery. They were from the early 90's I think. Always worked but did take a few minutes to fire up at the beginning of the season.

 

[peteK]

An old car sat nav will give you latitude/longitude position.

 

[Refueler]

An old car sat nav will give you latitude/longitude position.

Smartphone ... most tablets ..... as well.

 

[Bi111ion]

Smartphone ... most tablets ..... as well.

Thing about these old Magellan hand helds is they are sotough you can throw them repeatedly at a hard floor and they are fine. Phone, tablets and car sat navs not so much! Also they run on dry cells, which is good as an emergency back up. Many of us carry them in our ditch bags or in a Faraday cage in case of lightning strike.

 

[Refueler]

Just reminded me to plug mine in again !!