Thread: GPSmap 278 - internal memory specs?

Originally Posted by Doc_Koordinate

does anyone know the exact specs of the usable internal memory of the 278?
Garmin says it's a total of 2 GB. After crawling many forums I only found that by try & error some users have managed to load maps up to 1.85 GB.
Should be a bit more, eh...?
Some little space (16MB?) seems to be reserved for the basemap. Is it possible to exchange this basemap against a newer one of e.g. a nuvi?
Is the memory space for GPS data (Tracks, WPTs, etc.) located on the same chip or (together with the firmware?) stored seperated?
thanks for all information

2 GB ~= 1.86 GiB

The makers of storage media counts in SI decimal bytes prefix (10^3) while most file systems count file sizes with IEC binary bytes prefix (2^10). Microsoft Windows counts file sizes as GiB but shows as GB.

2 000 000 000 / 1 024 / 1 024 / 1 024 ~= 1.86

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ahh, thanks - I should have been aware of this - shame :-)

As far as I understood this, the GPSmap 278 can address 2GiB. This happenes usually when the firmware only understands FAT16 formatted cards. FAT16 is limited to 2GiB, but usual 2GB cards have only 1.86GiB as Ballebar pointed out. So there is a gap.

I think the trick with the russian card is, they use a 4GB card and partition it to a 2GiB first partition and an unused rest space and format the the 2GiB partition with FAT16. So you get a FAT16 formatted card with maximum space. This could be done in principle with any harddisk partition manager, although storage cards sometimes behave a little bit different compared to harddisks, and I don't know whether the GPSmap 278 understands all the possible partition tables correctly. SO it might be necessary to fiddle around a little bit.

Originally Posted by Doc_Koordinate

... link seems dead. The shop adress is in russia, but website only in russian language, so communication best done by [Only registered and activated users can see links. ]
Costs are ~ USD 150 incl. shipping, usually no customs payable, because declared value of the chip

bought one in 2014 - worked very well
the chip is still for sale (website in russian language only, translate with browser):
-> [Only registered and activated users can see links. ]
@ RUB 6000 - due to descent of the russian currency the equivalent price is currently only ~ € 95 or ~ US$ 105