TomTom Navigator 6 GPS and Treo 755P

[gsmaclean]

Due to a huge screw-up Sprint made with my account that took them weeks to fix (which I will write about another day), they ended up swapping out my beloved Treo 650 for a brand new Treo 755P (no charge, no contract extension, nothing).

Fine, great, I get faster Internet, all my old software runs, better camera, no antenna.

But then I try to run the one app I use more than anything - my TomTom Navigator 6 GPS - and no go. It runs, but does not find the GPS (standard "Palm" silver GPS that comes with Navigator 6).

I spent hours on the web researching. I am running the 1.07 Sprint firmware. I found references to the 680 "patch" for Navigator 6 from Palm and downloaded it - only to find that I am already running it (it was part of the 1.03 upgrade I put into my 650 a few months ago). I tried warm booting, soft booting, pulling the battery, deleting the GPS registration, nothing works.

Here's what happens:

- Start up Navigator. It looks for, finds and connects with the GPS.
- Shortly thereafter, it comes back and does one of the following:

a) "No GPS Signal"
b) "GPS Signal lost xx seconds ago" (and continues counting the seconds, never actually acquiring a signal)
c) Acquires a fix, updates the position on the map, then switches to "GPS Signal lost xx seconds ago" and never acquires another fix
d) Acquires a GPS signal and works

In the testing I've done, a) happens about 75% of the time, b) happens about 20% of the time, c) happens about 4% of the time and once in a very VERY rare while, d) happens and it works. However, when it is working, it is EXTREMELY slow - with one screen update every 2-3 seconds (used to be one update every 0.5 to 1 second on my 650).

If I try to enable TomTom Traffic, which worked perfectly on my 650, it either fails, locks up the phone, or reboots.

I *know* the GPS hardware, Bluetooth and GPS driver portion of the phone are working perfectly. I downloaded LapLogger GPS from http://www.laplogger.com - this free software just connects to your GPS and spits out raw data showing your position, altitude, speed, etc. It works perfectly, every time, never fails. So obviously the problem is with the TomTom software.

Talking to TomTom is pointless, they just answer with a canned email that Navigator 6 is not supported on the 755P.

I am super frustrated by this. I use this GPS application ALL THE TIME, and now I can't use it at all. I see multiple messages on here from people who have gotten Navigator 6 to work on their 755P. What's the secret?

 

[gsmaclean]

I found the solution to this problem, and my 755P is now working perfectly. I'll cut and paste what the solution was here from another forum, in case anyone is having the same problem.

The problem ended up not being in the software or GPS unit at all. It had to do with my SD card, and more specifically, in how it was formatted. I had a 4GB Patriot Mini-SD card in my Treo. I had formatted it in Windows, using the default parameters. Doing so had caused it to format the card as FAT32 with 4K clusters. This was crippling TomTom Navigator 6.

This format causes the Treo (and Navigator 6 in particular) to be very slow in accessing the card - so slow, that Navigator can't keep up with the data stream coming from the GPS receiver, so it just stops working. To fix the problem, you have to reformat the card using a command window inside Windows (after first copying the contents of the card to your hard disk, of course).

Very important is the cluster size of your card. You will get the best results with the following cluster sizes. Use the DOS box inside Windows for formatting your card:

Less than 4 GB (FAT16):
format X: /FS:FAT /A:32K

4 GB and more (FAT32):
format X: /FS:FAT32 /A:16K

"X" is the drive letter of the card.

I reformatted the card using 16K clusters:

C:\>format j: /FS:FAT32 /A:16K

After reformatting, I copied the card contents back onto the card, stuck it in my 755P, booted up TomTom, and hey presto - everything is working perfectly, no delays, no problems connecting to the GPS, nothing. It all just works!

Some other things I have found out about TomTom Navigator 6 and Treos, over the course of talking to Palm corporate support the past few days:

There are four different SKU's for Palm's GPS kits for Treos (the SKU is on a label on the side of the box that the hardware/software came in).

3229NA (works with 650 and 700w only)
3263NA (works with 650, 700w, 700p)
3301NA (works with 650, 680, 700w, 700wx, 700p, 750, 755p)
3380NA (Garmin software, works with 680, 700w, 700wx, 700p 750, 755p, Centro)

From what I was able to glean:

3229NA works only with the 650 and 700w, and includes a different (older) GPS receiver.

3263NA, 3301NA and 3380NA all include the same GPS receiver. The only difference between the packages is the software versions and the type of SD card included.

The 3380NA includes Garmin software, so I won't include it in this analysis.

While Palm shows the 3263NA as not being compatible with the 755P, it will work perfectly if you apply the patch for the 680 found here:

http://www.palm.com/us/support/downloads/gps_nav.html

Palm's internal support knowledge base tells them that only the 3301NA comes with Navigator 6, and that the 3263NA and 3229NA come with Navigator 5. This is incorrect. They all come with Navigator 6.

 

[ragadelic]

GS,

Thanks so much for documenting your frustrations. My Treo 700p started crashing whenever Navigator 6 was loading and I ended having to reload all of my Tomtom software to my newly formatted SD card. Everything worked fine except that it was horribly sloooooow. I formatted again following your instructions and it made a huge difference. Thanks for taking the time and saving me a lot of frustration.