Basic Questions: Memory, Maps, Routes

I have recently purchased a 60CSx, my first GPS unit. I bought a "US
Topo Upper East Coast" MicroSD card with it.

I note that the City Navigator North America v7 is temporarily
unavailable, reportedly due to an upcoming upgrade to v8.

I recently drove from my home in Maryland to Dallas and back. While my
Toyota Avalon has an excellent nav system, I took my Garmin as well in
order to familiarize myself with it. It did quite well considering only
the base map was available.

As you will see, I am clueless about certain features of my Garmin.

Does my 60CSx have built-in RAM in addition to any blank MicroSD card I
might purchase and install? What I'm getting at is this: when I buy my
City Navigator maps, where do the city maps get installed -- unit RAM
or a new MicroSD card that I will purchase? If the latter, what size
card? I read in the archives that a MicroSD card of up to 1GB capacity
may be usable. How much storage does a city map require -- if I'm
driving from Maryland to Omaha via Pittsburgh, Columbus, Indianapolis,
and Des Moines, e.g. (and I may be doing just that in July) will the
device and/or the SD card hold all of these city maps, or would it be
necessary to take a laptop along to swap maps as needed?

What are "NT"maps?

I /thought/ I read somewhere that the City Navigator North America maps
are available on a MicroSD card. Is that a faulty memory?

In setting up a route on the computer, if one wants to follow a route
other than the one chosen by the GPS unit, is it necessary to manually
select many waypoints? If I set my destination for Chicago, e.g., the
calculated route (I-90) is not my preferred route, so I selected and
used a number of waypoints along my preferred route to have the unit
calculate my desired route. Is there a better way?

What else don't I know ;--)

Thanks,

Davoud

--
usenet *at* davidillig dawt com

Davoud,

I have a 76CSx, but I believe the it's similar to your device in how it
uses memory. My 76CSx has the factory basemap loaded in on-board
memory (how much that is, I don't know) and it will hold tracks,
waypoints and routes in internal memory (as far as I know). Any maps
that you upload via MapSource, however, will go on the micro-SD card.
Current firmware updates for the 76CSx allow it to write track logs
directly to the micro-SD card so you don't have to worry about the
waypoints per track log limitations.

The western US (WA, OR, CA, AZ, NV, UT, ID, MT, WY, CO and NM) City
Navigator v7 maps take up about 297 MB in my MapSource before they
getting loaded to the device. I'm not sure if the file uploaded to the
device will be the same size or not. I have a 1 GB SanDisk card that
works just fine (not the Ultra II, which is said to have problems).

As for routing, I think you would have to fiddle with the road/route
preference options to get it to give preference to certain types of
roads. This probably won't fine-tune it exactly to where you want it,
but it might get it closer.

Regards,


ArizonaTraveler


Davoud wrote: