New York topo shows locked on a Montana 650

[pyarnall]

Hi,

I am new to the forum.  Looks like a great resource! 

I just acquired a Montana 650 after many years of good service from a 60CSx.  I have not installed any of Garmin's maps yet.  I thought I would try to load the New York topo as an exercise, alas without success.

I am on a Mac running Lion.  The topo is recognized by the mapmanager and the mapinstaller, which loads the map.  The map shows up in Basecamp just fine.  Problem is the Montana says it can't unlock the map, (which is not locked in the first place).

I have tried re-installing many times, with Basecamp running in the background, and not.  I have installed it on the 16g micro chip in a Garmin folder, and on the chip root.  Nothing.   

Garmin support was useless.  I emailed the map maker and he acknowledged that this sort of thing has been known to happen, but he does not have a Mac or a Montana, and recommended posting something here.

Anyone with ideas, I am all ears.  I would also like to know of a map, any map, (Mac version) that is known to work on the Montana so that I can try that as an exercise.

I still have a Win XP laptop with Mapsource but really want to migrate all my needs to the Mac laptop.

Thanks in advance to anyone with some suggestions.

pyarnall

[Boyd]

Over the years we have had several similar threads from Mac users about bogus lock messages. Unfortunately, I have yet to see a followup that stated a resolution. 

[-Oz-]

Do you have any locked maps loaded on your mac.  Such as City Navigator?

[pyarnall]

Dan, Boyd... thanks for replying.  I just figured out what the problem was, and the map is loaded, with a few quirks to be noted.

I have to say that using three different programs on the Mac side is ridiculous.  (I thought Mapsource was bad!)  And I guess I am an idiot today.  Basically. I moved all my maps from my PC over to the Mac via MapConverter.  That included City Nav, and Topo 2008.  Mapmanager said all were unlocked.  So. I loaded them onto the Montana.  Of course, I now realize, that they are only good for one device, (they were on my 60CSx).

I did not realize that MapInstaller was including the two already used maps in the group when I was installing the NY topo.  Every time.  Stupid.

I deleted all maps from MapManager except the NY topo. In MapInstaller I selected the whole state, and installed.  (Basecamp NOT running).  Then I started up the Montana.

Same message... "can't unlock maps"... JESUS!!  , but when i clicked OK, the topo is there and working.  That is the "quirk".

So, I am sorry for leading you guys on a bit of a wild goose chase.  In my defense, I have to say that Garmin is a long way from making this process painless, it is not particularly intuitive, and I am a technically minded guy not new to GPS!  New to the Mac side of Garmin's bizarre methods, ,however.  Live and learn.

[Boyd]

Great, that makes sense. We did have another thread (on Windows perhaps) with the same problem of including City Navigator.

Yeah, this stuff is confusing but Garmin should be given credit for coming a long way in the past couple years. There was no Mac support at all when I got my first unit. Then when they introduced their first Mac app it was really slow and buggy. Basecamp is now being developed and updated in tandem with their Windows software.

If you are not happy with Garmin, you would love Magellan or DeLorme, who still off no Mac versions of their software at all!