Oregon 'hidden' feature

[foresterscott01]

I always wondered why the Oregon never had the option to create a custom message on startup, like my old GPSmap60 did, so I could put my contact info on there in case of loss.  Today I finally stumbled upon it.  There's a 1kb text file on the internal memory (in the Garmin folder) that lets you customize a message and control the amount of time it is displayed upon initial startup.

Scott

[Indrid Cold]

LOL, all you needed to do was ask here and we would have clued you in. Welcome to the club:)

[Boyd]

http://garminoregon.wikispaces.com/Basic+Operations#FAQ-B7.)%20Can%20I%20add%20a%20custom%20startup%20message%20on%20my%20Garmin%20Oregon?

B7.) Can I add a custom startup message on my Garmin Oregon?

Yes. Connect your Oregon to a computer in USB mass storage mode and edit file [OR drive]:\Garmin\startup.txt in a text editor like notepad. You can add several lines of text at the end of this file which will be displayed at startup. This feature is useful for adding contact information in case the unit is lost.

Modifying the line <display=0> in the same file will change the the number of seconds that custom startup message is displayed (i.e. <display=5> will display the message for 5 seconds). Note your boot time will increase by the same number of seconds, so a value between 5-10 seconds is a reasonable setting.

B8.) Some foreign characters are not showing up in my Garmin Oregon custom startup message. How do I fix this?

The \Garmin\startup.txt file needs to be saved as UTF-8 encoding format to display all character sets properly. If you are using notepad to edit this file, select File>Save As and under "Encoding" select UTF-8 before saving the file.

B9.) How much information can I put in the startup.txt file?

The Oregon supports up to 5 lines of text. Each line can be a maximum of 30 characters.

B10.) How come my startup message didn't not appear or why did my startup message change when the Oregon was starting up?

After you make any change to the startup.txt file you need to restart the unit once to load the new file and sometimes you will see the text change during the startup process. On the second power cycle you should see your changes.