Casio Z-7000 with Trimble GPS Map 110 UniCard (Thrift store find) with weird problem.

[iKokomo]

I just found this Casio Z-7000 with Trimble GPS Map 110 UniCard and I had a couple questions about this unit. The GPS maps slides into the side of the Z-7000.

1. What is the history behind this? It seems like these are GPS maps for a pilot, but I cannot seem to find anything on these units.
2. The unit seems to work well without the GPS card inserted, however, when I place the GPS card in the unit (I replaced the battery in the card) the unit freezes and does not respond to any inputs. I remove the card and all works great.

Thanks for your help!!

 

[rimmeruk]

Never seen one of those before. But the card looks like a PCMCIA SRAM card and the software on it is probably long gone. The battery retains the data and without power for more than 10 mins the card becomes corrupted and requires a reformat. I know it sounds silly to ask, but is the battery the correct way around ? Also, make sure the write protect and lock switch is OFF. You could also try having a look inside the device at the card pins to make sure none are bent, it is easy to insert those cards with force incorrectly.

It's a little unusual to provide software on volatile sram cards instead of flash or eprom. Maybe there is a rom or flash area on the card also.
If software stored on the device is trying to read from the card when it's booted, then that could be causing the device to lock-up ? I've no idea really.

 

[bifo86]

GPS data needs to be updated regularly, or did prior to reliable OTA data connections that worked across providers, like 3G, so it probably just contained a set of GPS maps and the program used to access them and possibly a GPS antenna. If the software is from 1995 though it's more likely that it just has GPS maps and would have needed to be plugged into an external antenna, maybe?

They moved over to CF and SD cards later on since they were lower power with higher capacity by the early 00s and many car GPS systems were based on DVDs and in order to update them you had to go to your car dealer and pay for them to burn you an updated DVD.