Wow! My Magellan Meridian Platinum still works!

Discussion in 'Magellan GPS' started by MrTommy, May 6, 2019.

  1. MrTommy

    MrTommy

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    After all the hoopla about how many GPS's weren't going to work because of the 'date thingie', I was sure our ancient and well loved Magellan Meridian Platinums were going to be toast. Here's what happened . . .

    The day this "event" took place, we took our ancient Magellan GPS's outside (two of them) and attempted to fire them up. Well guess what? Neither could find any satellites. Damn! We've been using these for YEARS for Geocaching and finding our way in the desert with our ATV's and RZR's. Plus, we had a program (MapSend) that could load Topo maps from all the 48 lower states. What a magnificient program! Magellan no longer supports this wonderful program of course - and now sells Topo software by the state. Duh. More money for Magellan, of course. HOWEVER, today wifey took one of them out into the backyard and fired it up to test it - just in case. Well, low and behold, it found all the satellites it used to find, and pinpointed our location exactly. The second one works as well. So now we don't have to buy new and more expensive GPS's that have less 'mappage' and information. Not sure what happened, but this is sure cool.

    Is this like the bogus Y2K debacle?
     
    MrTommy, May 6, 2019
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  2. MrTommy

    Nuvi-Nebie Moderator

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    The week rollover problem doesn't always occur on a specific date so your units may still see this problem in the future, early GPSs only had a 'week counter' of 1023 weeks which is roughly 20 years, these 20 year blocks are as follows: -

    Block . . . . . . . . range
    1 . . . . . . . . . . . 6th January 1980 to 22nd August 1999
    2 . . . . . . . . . . . 22nd August 1999 to 6th April 2019
    3 . . . . . . . . . . . 6th April 2019 to 21 November 2038
    4 . . . . . . . . . . . 21 November 2038 to 2057
    5 . . . . . . . . . . . 2057 to 2076


    However the 1023 week block is sometimes shifted away from these dates by the manufacturer, so a unit made in say 2005 could count from then to 2024 before seeing a problem, also the problem may only be seen when the unit 'forgets' the current date due to the internal battery failing
     
    Nuvi-Nebie, May 8, 2019
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  3. MrTommy

    MrTommy

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    Interesting. Thanks for the reply and explanation. I thought this problem was all happening on one day, as most of the articles I read pointed out. And, as I mentioned previouisly, we took our Magellans out on "the day" and neither of them worked. Couldn't find a single satellite. Now they work fine. I guess we'll just forge ahead like nothing happened - because nothing DID!
     
    MrTommy, May 11, 2019
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