Waypoint transfer?

[Random guy]

I can't find my unit! At least thats what keeps popping up when I try to transfer my waypoints from my Lake Master software to my new Lowrance H2O hand held. Of course my Lakemaster program does not list this model but I set the baud rate and any other options to the proper setting. Bad cable or not compatable? Come on you IT and techy guys, help the hillbilly!

[PerchJerker]

Okay Scott ND, looking for clarification again. Until recently the LM map chips were read-only, you could not write to them. They now are shipping chips that are read-write in case they go that route with their upgrade program (whenever they have one).

I am not very familiar with the Nav chips, but I thought they were read- only chips, not read-write chips. And there are plenty of horror stories from guys who tried to just read their Nav chip with a card reader on their PC, I know one of them personally and he is also a computer guy for a living. Are you sure you're writing to your Nav chip? Or is it only because Lowrance helped you get your Nav files on a larger chip -- maybe not something you can do with an off-the-shelf Nav chip??

[Giant_Jackpot]

PerchJerker,

I tend to agree with you that ND may have a unique situation given that they put his map data on a larger card. I will try backing up my chips and then writing them to a blank chip and see what happens.

[PerchJerker]

As far as I'm concerned, the man that can build that automatic jigging contraption you caught that pike with on Lake Minnetonka last winter can do just about anything -- and you're the man. As for me, I have not tried putting my back-up files on a blank card because my boat/gps is in storage so I wouldn't be able to tell if it worked anyway. So I'll be curious what you find out. I'll try to find out if my buddy has done anything like that with his Nav chip, I know he was REALLY MOTIVATED to get a back-up after he zapped his first chip

[Giant_Jackpot]

Ha! Considering I have had that contraption for about 8 years and that was the first fish I ever caught on it, I’m not going to accept the title of “the man” anytime soon.

I will try doing the Nav chip sometime in the next few days. I’m not worried about zapping that chip because I have to send it back anyway. Last August I wrote an e-mail to their cartography department and filed a discrepancy report on a problem I ran into on Vermilion. On parts of the lake if I zoomed in closer than ½ mile I would lose all of the contours. Kind of pissed me off as I was trying to troll around some rock reefs! Anyway, they just sent me an e-mail that they have the problem fixed and the want me to send the chip back for a replacement. We’ll see what happens………….

[Giant_Jackpot]

I copied both my Navionics and Lakemaster to my PC this weekend. I then transferred the Navionics to a blank chip and it would not show any lake contours. I could see the different sections of the country when I tried to select the map data but no dice on getting contours. I then erased the Navionics from the blank card and did the same with the Lakemaster. No luck there either. Doesn’t look like having the backups are going to do me any good. I did not try writing anything to either the Navionics or Lakemaster.

[PerchJerker]

I was on the phone with LakeMaster on Friday so I asked them about the backup. He said you can copy the file to your PC, but the file is chip specific so it will only work if you reload it to the chip you bought it on. So it protects you if you accidentally format your chip or zap it somehow without frying the chip, but it doesn't do you any good if your chip is lost or stolen. I guess that makes sense, I'd hate to imagine how many pirated versions of the maps would be out there if you could just copy them.

[Giant_Jackpot]

Yup, they would not sell many chips if we could just pass them around just like Napster. They do however need to do something about how we get the data in the first place. I think they should have a subscription service and sell us only the maps we want for $xx.xx. We could just download from a web site and be done with it. Once they figure out how to do that, and make it so we can’t give a downloaded map to our friends I would think they could sell a lot of individual maps to guys that only fish one or two lakes.