Loading 60CSx Maps on a Mac in May, 2020

[wRadar]

MacOS Catalina (10.15.4), and MapInstall 4.3.3. My maps all show up in Basecamp, and in MapInstall I can get all the way up to the installation. But when it gets going, it starts out with five hours remaining, then continues to grow and grow (showing 38 hours 12 minutes right now). Any idea what's going on? I just want to load maps!

Thanks in advance!

[Boyd]

I assume you are doing this by connecting the 60csx directly to the Mac with a USB cable? The 60csx has the really old USB 1.0 interface, maybe that just isn't compatible? I have one but never use it anymore.

But maps are stored on the microSD card on the 60csx, not on the GPS itself. If your mac has an SD card slot, pul the card and use that instead. Otherwise, use a USB SD card reader, that is a much better solution since it's so much faster. They should be cheap if you don't already have one. Get one with USB 3 and it will be really fast.

Of course, there could be something else odd happening, but if you're connecting directly to the GPS itself, I'll bet that is the problem.

[wRadar]

Thanks, Boyd. I was hoping you'd chime in! 

Yup, connected to the unit itself.

When I connect the MicroSD card to the computer directly (well, via a USB-C to MicroSD card reader), MapInstall doesn't "see" it. Is there any trick to the format or file structure on the MicroSD to make MapInstall "see" it when using a card reader?

I'm hoping to save off buying a new GPS, as I use it so rarely, and the 60CSx still does all I really need it to do (show a map, point north, etc.). Hopefully this isn't the straw that broke the camel's back!

[Boyd]

Make sure the card is formatted as FAT-32. On the Mac, use Disk Utility (in the Utilities folder inside the Applications folder). Choose Erase Disk (assuming there is nothing on the card that you want) and pick MS-DOS (FAT) formatting.

I know there are some changes to Disk Utility in Catalina, but don't think this has changed. If you can't see the card in Disk Utility, maybe it's defective? They do go bad, it has happened to me. You might also try restarting your Mac and trying everything again before doing anything else, just in case something weird is going on.

That's about all I can think of.

[wRadar]

So, it turns out that using MapInstall and connecting to the device (via USB-C to hub to USB cable to 60CSx) is the way to do it. The catch: it took about 40 HOURS to transfer the maps to the device. 239 maps, 389.6 MB onto a 1GB SD card--not at all anything I'd consider "huge."

If there's a way I can get MapInstall (Mac) "see" the SD card in the reader as a valid target, I think it'd make the transfer a LOT faster. If anyone gets that to work, please post here.

Thanks again, Boyd, for the help!

[Boyd]

I have used a USB card reader for this on my 2013 MacBook Air, but not recently. Are you using an internal card slot? Does your Mac show the card on your desktop? There may be something different with Catalina, or the T2 chip on newer Macs might be an issue? I am still running Sierra on my laptop for compatibility with old software. Installed Catalina on my 2012 quad mini server just for testing but haven't really done anything with it yet.

What Mac do you have?

[wRadar]

I have a new MacBook Air (2020), and it only has two USB-C/Thunderbolt 3.0 ports. Therefore, an external card reader is really the only option available.

As for OS, it's Catalina (10.15.4).

Unrelated: I just noticed today that my 60CSx seems to either have been impacted by the GPS week issue, or it's being really fritzy, because the date is showing 11-OCT-00.  At least the position is correct!

[Boyd]

Cool - just gave one of those to my granddaughter. Must be something strange with the USB-C port and the reader. Odd that it works with the old GPS however. It would be an extra step, but still much faster than USB1.0... you could send the map to a USB flash drive if you have one. Then copy the map over to the SD card (assuming you can plug both the flash drive an SD card in at the same time).

Alternately, you could create a disk image, send the map to it, then copy it over to the SD card

https://support.apple.com/guide/disk-utility/create-a-disk-image-dskutl11888/mac

also see this:

http://www.javawa.nl/virtualdevice.html