Furuno - don't make my mistake

[Pincoya]

I have a 12mnth old Furuno chart plotter/radar (1824C using a common GD-1920C video plotter) and a week or so ago used an SD card to transfer waypoints etc from my laptop. I then shut down the machine and re started it some time later, forgetting that the SD card was still in the slot. I now know that this is a very bad thing to do and it has cost me over $2000 for a new printed circuit board. Apparently, if an SD card is in the slot on start up, the Furuno will read and load any software on it into its own BIOS.

I cannot, knowing about this, find any reference or warning about this in the Furuno installation or user manuals and for me it has been an expensive lesson. Not just the cost of the repair but also in delays and associated costs, I am in Mexico and this is taking forever to sort out.

Paul

 

[Seajet]

Sorry to hear about your problems. One would have hoped a thing like that would be in BIG red letters in the manual, or even on the unit...

 

[ChrisE]

My Navman 8084 uses the same mechanism to update it's Bios. I'm surprised that it loaded a waypoint file into the Bios tho', it usually requires a .bin file. Tough luck.

 

[idpnd]

That's a serious design flaw, especially if the SD slot is also meant to be used for GPX transfers etc. Beggars belief really