Recording a ride whilst following a course on a garmin 500 ?

[ColinJ]

On the computer , you know what i meant.Something else thats viewed as external memory using the same irq can mean the garmin sometimes gets missed but i would check with the cable 1st

Oh, actually my laptop DOES have a card slot but I have never used it so I forgot that it is there. I did see someone mentioning SD cards when having similar problems with an Edge 800. I just assumed that they meant the card in the GPS!

It will be nice if it IS just a cable problem. It isn't really worth me spending much more time on the problem if the cable doesn't fix it.

If the new cable works then I think I will run the 500 and my old Etrex side by side for a few hundred miles until I am sure that the 500 is working properly AND that I understand how to use it. I have ridden tens of thousands of kms with the Etrex and it has proved to be very reliable.

 

[EnPassant]

@ColinJ
Not sure how much this helps, but anyway, I have a Garmin Car SatNav and no other usb cable I possess other than the one it was supplied with will work for data and that includes one that works perfectly well to connect my Samsung phone for data purposes.

Personally I find it hard to believe that there are 3 different types of usb cable, i.e. those wired for power only, those wired for power and data, and some magic version with added pixie dust that Garmin uses, not least because this would mean there is also something in the standard for three different types which makes it a bit distant from a 'standard' in my view but I digress.

Whether your/any bike Garmin is similarly touchy I couldn't say, but since I'm assuming you were given yours minus its supplied cable if the one you ordered is garmin it ought to work, if however it's a generic 'data' one, it still may not.

 

[ColinJ]

@ColinJ
Not sure how much this helps, but anyway, I have a Garmin Car SatNav and no other usb cable I possess other than the one it was supplied with will work for data and that includes one that works perfectly well to connect my Samsung phone for data purposes.

Personally I find it hard to believe that there are 3 different types of usb cable, i.e. those wired for power only, those wired for power and data, and some magic version with added pixie dust that Garmin uses, not least because this would mean there is also something in the standard for three different types which makes it a bit distant from a 'standard' in my view but I digress.

Whether your/any bike Garmin is similarly touchy I couldn't say, but since I'm assuming you were given yours minus its supplied cable if the one you ordered is garmin it ought to work, if however it's a generic 'data' one, it still may not.

It is generic and I suspect that you may be right!

The cable I am currently using is from an old phone or camera. I can't remember which device I used to use it on but I know that the cable worked fine with that. My cousin said that the 500 worked fine at home before he replaced it with his 810. I'm sure that he was using the Garmin cable that came with it, but he didn't bring that with him.

If the worst comes to the worst, my cousin probably has a spare Garmin cable so I could ask him to post me one.

 

[Nibor]

Have you go Garmin Express installed? That may help your connectivity issues.

 

[ColinJ]

Have you go Garmin Express installed? That may help your connectivity issues.

I haven't because I still have Win XP on the laptop and Garmin Express doesn't run on that OS. I can't see how it would work anyway if Windows can't even tell that the GPS is connected. I tried Garmin WebUpdater and that can't connect either.

I'm probably going to put Win 7 on the laptop soon so I could try Garmin Express after that but I will have tried the new cable before then. It should arrive tomorrow or Thursday.

 

[ColinJ]

My new cable has arrived! I am about to plug in the Edge 500 ...

And the result is ...

 

[ColinJ]

Ha ha - IT WORKS!

One thing I notice is that this cable plugs in more securely than the useless one. The metal surround on the old mini-USB connector seems too long. This new one fully inserts but the old one seemed a mm or two too long.

Now I need to read up about the file structure - what goes where and what each file does.