Subject: eTrex Venture/Mariner and Marine database info Newsgroups: sci.geo.satellite-nav Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2001 13:22:58 -0800 The following information is current as of November 13, 2001, and(as far as I know) only applies to the eTrex Venture/Mariner. (If you're impatient, and just want to "get to the good stuff", jump down to point (6) below) The Venture and Mariner are "the same", except for being different colors. They both use the same firmware. The Mariner was manufactured for a separate company, WestMarine. Their information page is at(URL may wrap): Just in case it makes any difference to the following information, my Venture is using firmware version 2.29. From Garmin's webpage about the Venture: "The eTrex Venture offers a worldwide database of cities and increased internal memory." "The memory capacity of one megabyte allows the eTrex Venture to accept downloaded information from GARMIN's new MapSource® Points of Interests CD-ROM." From Garmin's Mapsource POI webpage: "Specifically, the map download features of this product are intended for use with the eTrex Venture, GPS 76, and GPS 152." From Garmin's Venture/Mariner Updates & Downloads webpage: "If MapSource data is loaded to this unit, this unit's preloaded Marine POI database will be erased. Please download the file below to recover this Marine POI database. If you currently have MapSource data loaded into your GPS unit, it will be erased and replaced with this POI database." WHAT ALL THIS REALLY MEANS: 1) My Venture came with the Worldwide City database installed. To see the version, go to the Map screen, select the 'Setup Map' option, then select the 'i' button. Mine shows the 'Map Name' as "Worldwide City Database, , Dec 2000". Selecting the 'Map Name' and using the Click-Stick allows you to toggle the display of the worldwide city database on/off. 2) You can use the "Download(1.90MB) - Venture" link on the Updates & Downloads webpage to download WWCity.exe, which is a self-extracting exe that will startup an InstallShield installation, and if you follow through with it, will create a Start menu item(World-Wide City Database Recovery), with three sub-menu choices - Load, Uninstall, and Help. It also creates three files, in the directory of your choice - a help file, updater.exe, and a ".rgn" file. The updater.exe file is the program which loads the database(the .rgn file) into the GPS. In other words, you can load/reload the WorldWide City Database into the Venture by using the WWCity.exe package. 3) If you have a Venture, there is no point in downloading the 'Mariner.exe' program via the "Download(1.79MB) - Mariner" link. It will install on your PC, but when run, will not update the Venture GPS - the message from updater.exe is "No updates are available for your product". Presumably it will however run if you have a Mariner, and will restore the original Marine navaid database for the unit. 4) Garmin plans to change the Updates & Downloads webpage to make it clear that for the Venture/Mariner, if you download data from the Mapsource POI CD-ROM, it will erase the database data that was originally loaded in the GPS - worldwide cities for the Venture, marine navaids for the Mariner. These can be recovered by using the appropriate link to download either WWCity.exe or Mariner.exe. 5) According to Garmin, the Venture comes with the Worldwide City database, and if you want Marine navaids, you either buy a Mariner, or buy the Mapsource POI CD-ROM. 6) There is another option to get Marine data for the Venture. This option, while it uses a Garmin-supplied program, may not be supported. There could be a link on the Updates & Downloads webpage called "Download Marine POI database(2.22MB) - Venture", pointing to: Just like WWCity.exe, this is a self-extracting InstallShield program, and it will create Start menu items, and exe, help, and data files(in this case, two '.rgn' files). Once installed, you have a choice of loading the "Americas Marine POI database" or the "International Marine POI database". When loaded to the GPS, the International database shows on the Map Setup screen as "International Marine Point Basemap, , Jan 2001". The Americas database shows as "Americas Marine Point Basemap, , Jan 2001". 6A) I do not know if the Marine.exe program/data works with the Mariner. 6B) The Americas and International marine databases also include cities, but their data files are both smaller than the data file for the Worldwide City database, so some city data must be 'missing' from the marine databases, compared to the worldwide city database. 6C) Depending on how you have chosen your Map Setup options, you may have to zoom in before any marine navaids will show on your map screen. For example, with the Americas Marine Basemap loaded into my Venture, positioned at the Vancouver, BC city(from the database), using Metric units, and the Map Setup option for 'Pts of Interest' 'Max Zoom' set to "Auto", at a map scale of 50KM, no marine navaids show on the Map Screen. Once zoomed in to 30KM scale, they do appear.