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Loading TOPO! maps onto hard drive

Started by mlibkind, July 19, 2020, 12:25:39 PM

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mlibkind

I was forced to migrate from Windows 7 to Windows 10. I got my original version of National Geographic TOPO! up and running, but for the life of me I can't figure out how to move all the map files to the hard drive so that I don't have to continually swap out disks. This task was never written about in their meager instructions and I can't remember how I did it.

Any ideas?

Boyd

#1
Quote from: mlibkind on July 19, 2020, 12:25:39 PMAny ideas?

I still have a copy of Topo! in its box, but have not used it since the days of Windows XP. :) I didn't think it was compatible with Windows 10 at all, sounds like you have gotten farther than other posts I've seen.

LaptopGPSWorld.com would have been the perfect place to ask this, but unfortunately they shutdown for good at the end of June. However, you can still view archived snapshots of the forums on the Wayback Machine

https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.laptopgpsworld.com/

BTW, ArcGIS evidently bought TOPO! from National Geographic and has offered the maps as a layer in their software. There are several sites where you can access this in your browser, for example

https://maps.njpinebarrens.com/#lat=40.41525263594897&lng=-76.9934844900971&z=11&type=topo&gpx=

It is also possible to access these maps directly and save them on your computer or export them to almost any app or GPS using Mobile Atlas Creator, a free open source program that runs on Windows, MacOS and Linux. I use Mobile Atlas Creator to distribute the free maps that I make myself, and have written a comprehensive tutorial that you'll find here

https://boydsmaps.com/mobile-atlas-creator/

Go to Appendix A on the very last page of the PDF tutorial, I explain how to access the National Geographic Topo's there. This will not give you the special features of the original software, but you will have full access to the maps of the whole US.

ArcGIS has stated that they plan to discontinue these maps soon, but so far they have not done so.