Garmin GPS50

[sirslurpee]

My grandparents bought one of these ancient units in Florida from a garage sale.. Grandpa has a GPS75 and they both fit on the same base so he tried to plug it into the base on his boat and it wouldn't turn on. He gave it to me.. said "if you can get it to work, you can keep it." so I got it out tonight for the first time since spring to see if I could get it to work. First thing I did.. took it apart, of course. I took the keypad off, and nothing else.. then I looked at the battery pack contacts, one seemed a little low, so I bent them both up a little bit, wiped them off. I put the keypad back on, and it turned right on. Some of the buttons didn't work though, so I took it back apart, and left the front cover and the rubber keys off and just toutched the switch pad directly. All the keys worked again! Then I got to the messages screen.. the 3v memory battery is bad. So.. I took it apart again. It just slid out, and it has 2 wires with flat contacts pressed onto the battery, a blue shielding for the sides, and a piece of Styrofoam spacer. So.. I remembered I have a few old computer motherboards in the basement that have the same type of 3v battery for the BIOS system clock. So I hijacked one of those. I just put it in, it still gives me the mem batt message, but it remembered that i turned audio off so if it doesn't work, i might try to solder the contacts to the battery, then if that still doesnt work, I'll try another battery.
Anyway, i'm kind of proud of myself and pretty excited to finally have a GPS that will give me ground speed, or mark a spot that I might be catching fish at that I want to go back to.. As long as the memory works, I'll be set. If not, I guess it will still work for trolling speed :D
Not bad for free eh?

p.s. does anyone know if this unit still works with the satellites in service today? i can't seem to get it to acquire... (i take that back.. it just locked up like 15 minutes later haha)

[waterfoul]

First time you turn on a GPS unit after moving it more than say... 100 miles... it will take it some time to aquire it's new location. It doesn't surprise me at all it took it a while to find itself.

Good luck on the battery thing!

[sirslurpee]

i got it to acquire last night.. it worked real good, but the memory battery still wasn't right. i ganked another one from an old motherboard and it works, but now the unit turns off on it's own between 3 seconds and 3 minutes of having it on. there seems to be no method to it, it just does it randomly, even when it's turned on and then set on a solid surface and not moved, bumped, vibrated, or ANYTHING..
i'll check the batter pack with a VOM later, and then clean all the contacts.. if that still doesn't work, i'm gonna try to figure out what the power pins are on the rear and hook it up to a DC adapter and try to pinpoint where the problem is.