New 660 teething problems

[Beemerman59]

Apart from having a few bike problems today I managed to get to play with my new 660 for the firt time. I have had a 550 for four years and I do like some of the improvements on the new model. I did have two issues today though that I would like to see if I can cure. The main one is that the 660 quite often won't recognise the 16GB Micro SD card I have installed with all my MP3's on. At a guess I would say it successfully reads the card 1 in 3 attempts of switching the unit on. The card I bought is a class 4 version and I'm wondering if this is not fast enough? Any thoughts?

The second problem may be related - on one occasion, the audio output from the MP3 player would go blank for a second or so and then restart. This kept on happening every 20 seconds or so. Switching the unit off and on again cured that problem and it did only happen the once. I'm playing the audio via Bluetooth to a Scala G4 headset.

 

[chas820]

Did you put your mp3 in a folder called mp3?I had to do that with mine before it would "see" it.With the design of the card holder,it`s only the battery holding it in.It might be worth trying a piece of folded paper to increase the pressure on it.

 

[Bumpkin]

You're also meant to put MP3s into folders with no more than 100 tracks in each ISTR. Best to have folders for each album I find. Not sure if you're already doing that or not.

Not sure if the 1,000 track ceiling still exists, you can have more but it will only list the first 1,000 tracks.

 

[Beemerman59]

Thanks for the feedback. I had just dumped all the tracks onto the SD card - all 700 odd of them. So I will re-organise them into a generic MP3 folder and then break them down into sub folders as suggested and see if that does the trick.

 

[markie_wales]

Not sure if the 1,000 track ceiling still exists, you can have more but it will only list the first 1,000 tracks.

that's gone now with the 660 - not that 1000 is not enough, but still good to have to only have one micro SD card for all the music I want to take on holiday.

cheers

Markie

 

[John Armstrong]

Whatever you do, may or may not work.

Some people swear by doing x, y & z and never have any problems. Personally I think my 660 doesn't like starting up on the car / bike mount and then being expected to find the SD card as 99% of the time I start it up off a mount if finds it ok, compared to about 10% when its on a mount.

 

[Beemerman59]

Whatever you do, may or may not work.

Some people swear by doing x, y & z and never have any problems. Personally I think my 660 doesn't like starting up on the car / bike mount and then being expected to find the SD card as 99% of the time I start it up off a mount if finds it ok, compared to about 10% when its on a mount.

Interesting. I have only had the 660 a few days but the issue has only shown itself when on the mount. Did you ever report this to Garmin at all?

 

[John Armstrong]

Not yet as I hadn't read other peoples experiences on the zumo forum site.

 

[Beemerman59]

Well I have put the files into seperate folders of about 100 in each and all those sit in one folder called MP3. Tried it fitted in the bike cradle and turned it on and off about ten times. Fired up very time so I'm hopefull thats the problem solved. Thanks all.

 

[Sleepy]

It's strange how these things work... (or don't)..

I just created a folder on my SD card, called it 'Zumo Music' and put about 200 songs on it..

It works fine.

 

[Beemerman59]

Well, took the 660 out last night on my other bike (K1100RS) and had the same problem - it was only recognising the MicroSD card less than 50% of the time. I also had one occasion where the Bluetooth MP3 feed was only being received in mono in the Scala G4 - came back to normal stereo with switching the 660 off and on. Very weird.

I registered on Zumoforums last night so will have a looksee if I can find any info on this. Might just be the SD card I'm using so will buy a decent 8Gb version with a higher class number than the current 4. Otherwise I'm really happy with the unit, unfortunately though I upgraded from the 550 mostly to get the Bluetooth stereo MP3 playback so this is a bit of a pain.

 

[ampthill]

In my experience the 660 is sensitive to which micro card it will accept. Put in a 4Gb card to start with but the card was not recognised by the zumo (and the card is good as it works in other devices)

Put in a different (8Gb card) and recognised with no problems whatsover

It may also be worth ensuring you have the most up-to-date firmware on it as IIRC Garmin did undertake some updates which attempted to address this, but with what success I am unsure.

Peter

 

[Beemerman59]

In my experience the 660 is sensitive to which micro card it will accept. Put in a 4Gb card to start with but the card was not recognised by the zumo (and the card is good as it works in other devices)

Put in a different (8Gb card) and recognised with no problems whatsover

It may also be worth ensuring you have the most up-to-date firmware on it as IIRC Garmin did undertake some updates which attempted to address this, but with what success I am unsure.

Peter

Thanks for the reply. I have updated the firmware so that should be OK, although I did not experience any problems with the previous revision. Had not had the 660 long enough though to be sure. I'm going to try a different SD card as I did buy the cheapest one I could find on Ebay at 16GB/Class 4. I will try an 8GB/Class 10 next time.

 

[justinguitar]

I just got a 660 today too!!

Are you using the RAM mount or one of the TT ones?

 

[Beemerman59]

Change of plan. Have been on the Zumoforums and found some other experiences of the same problem. They suggest a hard reset after a firmware upgrade and also to delete a temp.gpx file before doing so if you find one. Well, I did, so deleted that and did the hard reset after taking the SD card out. Seems to be all good so far - have switched off/on quite a few times and its finding the sd card OK everytime so far. So, will leave it for a while to see how it goes from now on. Will post up later if its cured it or not.

 

[Beemerman59]

I just got a 660 today too!!

Are you using the RAM mount or one of the TT ones?

I'm using a TT V2 locking mount fitted to a TT extender bracket which is now located on the upper brace of my GSA screen.