I have an older GPSIII plus and I download the Ohio topo map. I also updated
to the latest MapSource I managed to get a topo map loaded into the the GPS with
MapSource. The map works in that it displays roads and topo contours but it will
not display any text. Everything shows up OK in MapSource on the computer.
Also the Mapsource maps work fine in the GPS. Is there something I am missing
that could correct this?
Dave Woolf
Text (feature names) was surpressed to keep clutter down. When you put the cursor on the GPSr over a feature the name and other info will display. Some features do not have any text because the source data did not have any name/description.
I was aware of this feature, however I get no meaningful text when
placing GPS cursor over the feature. It only displays generic names
like "Road", "Railroad", "River" ,etc. And it displays nothing when
putting cursor on topo contours.
Another thing I have observed for the topo contours is, with certain
text size setting on the GPS, the contour lines are labelled with "FT",
but with no numbers.
Dave Woolf
Garmin upgrades the capabilities of their GPSrs both in newer units and software versions on the units. What you are describing sounds like some of the coding placed in the name field can not be handled by your older GPSr unit and it is displaying the feature type rather than the information in the name field. Does is show the Interstate, US and State highway numbers in the standard symbol for those types or roads?
No it does not display anything for Interstates, U.S. or state roads except
for the generic name "ROAD". I am probably out of luck. because I have
found no updates available for this older unit when searching the internet.
Dave Woolf
Comes a time when you just have to save your pennies and replace a perfectly good working item with a newer unit. A few weeks after you have the newer unit, you may wonder how you ever got along so long on the older unit.
There is also an annoying problem with older Garmin units - all the way up through the 60csx in fact - where lower case names will not display correctly on the map. I spent awhile googling for a solution to this last year and found others complaining about the same problem but no fix. This is usually manifested by the unit displaying the first letter of a name, then displaying dashes for the rest of the name. For example, Jones Road might be displayed as J---- R---.
From your description I can't quite tell if this might be the problem....
On my first efforts at map authoring in Jan, 2008; I found that names in all caps were showing on the GPSr as initial cap with following small letters. OK?? for names, but not nice for railroads, i.e. UPRR > Uprr, BNSF > Bnsf, CSX > Csx, etc.