Garmin question

[T-Bone]

Took my GPS out of the locker yesterday, mounted and turned it on and there is blank vertical lines across the screen. Is it Junk? It is a discontinued model (162), it worked fine when I put it away.

[VernH]

Took my GPS out of the locker yesterday, mounted and turned it on and there is blank vertical lines across the screen. Is it Junk? It is a discontinued model (162), it worked fine when I put it away.

I would guess that there is either a bad connection between the LCD panel and the printed circuit board. Those connectors are extremely fine and just a tiny bit of corrosion could take out a single connection and since the rows and columns are multiplexed, a whole line is gone. A local repair shop could reseat the LCD panel. Alternaltely it could be one of the column drive transistors which would be internal to a big driver chip.

Either could be fixed. The cost would most likely be more than the unit is currently worth. I sold a 162 with external antenna, cables with a hotmap disk last year for $100. It was in perfect condition.

The new color units with the map chips are really nice. The 162 had minimal memory (2 meg?) and I had to download stuff virtually everytime I went to a new lake which meant pulling the unit out of the boat or dragging a laptop to the boat. Now I just pull a couple of SD cards.

I really liked the Garmin receivers, I still think they are better than the L and H receivers. Wasn't as fond of their (Garmin) sonar units though. The advantages of recording combo units with good sonar overrides the less than great GPS modules in my opinion.

Vern

[T-Bone]

Thanks for the information. I knew it was past time to change, but it sure was easy to use on home waters.

[mark1895]

My Garmin 162 was doing the same thing this summer. I called Garmin and they told me I just needed to update the software in the unit. They said there was some new signal coming from sats. that the old software could not recognize and would shut down. I updated the 162 software and its worked great since.

[VernH]

My Garmin 162 was doing the same thing this summer. I called Garmin and they told me I just needed to update the software in the unit. They said there was some new signal coming from sats. that the old software could not recognize and would shut down. I updated the 162 software and its worked great since.


That would be great if that fixes his problem. Since I sold my unit to a friend, I thought he might have the same problem. Will call him today.

I checked Garmin's website. There hasn't been a software update since 12/07. I know the unit I had was updated to 3.70. Vertical lines still sound like a hardware problem to me.

Is Ver 3.70 what you updated to?

Per Garmin's website: GPSMAP 162, Ver. 3.70, as of December 3, 2007

Vern

[mark1895]

I'll check tonight. I thought the same thing as you (hardware problem) but updating the software fixed it. I never updated the software before this because the unit worked great until this happened.