Side Topic: What is Your Oldest GPS Device?

Still have my c530 garming unit. Knock on wood, still running strong.

Orginal Garmin Nuvi 350 purchased in December 2005. Still works plugged into the wall or car charger but not on battery as the power switch gave up the ghost years ago.

Shoe boxes upon shoe boxes full of maps from everywhere I've literally ever been.

Does that count?

This calls for an archaeological dig!

Found the Garmin 45 (part of the display doesn't work).

Found the two hand-made GPS antennas, one a helix, the other an early puck-style.

I know I've got at least one Trimble prototype -- maybe it's in the garage.

I do believe that the more I rely on a GPS and less on reading a Map, the less I could get around without a GPS.

While I don't have boxes full of maps, I do have some that I like keeping.

I still have a IQM5 still working

Beside owning my Garmin Nuvi 2455LMT/C530/C580 devices, I also have:

Cobra GPS1000DLX Global Positioning System

Weight: 3.2 pounds
Dimension: 1x3x6 inches
Battery: 2 AA
Display: B/w 3.5
Display Resolution: 120x160
4 MB Built-In Memory
12 Parallel Channels with ASAP II Technology
Stores up to 500 navigational waypoints and 100 map datum's to choose from
Waterproof Case up to 1 meter for 30 min
Up to 22 hours in battery save mode
Compass, Altimeter, Clock
Backlit Key Pad
WAAS Enabled

The GPS 1000 DLX comes pre-programmed with continental U.S. highways, state, Canadian provincial, and European country boundaries. The unit also lets you program and store up to 50 different navigational routes using up to 50 points in each route. Users can also store up to 500 waypoints with names and symbols. Consumers can use the included Rand McNally StreetFinder software, PC interface cable, and 32 MB Secure Digital memory card to transfer data and take advantage of the unit's powerful mapping functions. Additional features include mapping capabilities for navigating roads, highways, intersections, addresses, and points of interest; the ability to track your travel and retrace your route (up to 10 separate tracks); a display that tracks current position, altitude, bearing, time of day, speed of travel, average speed throughout trip, and estimated time of arrival; and an easy-to-use rocker panel that operates like a joystick. The GPS1000 DLX is waterproof to IPX7 standards and can operate in temperatures from 5 to 158 degrees F.

What's in the Box
GPS 1000 DLX receiver, lanyard cord, Rand McNally StreetFinder software, 32 MB Secure Digital memory card, PC interface cable, quick reference guide, user's manual.

I also have a Garmin eTrex Vista H and Legend H Handheld GPS in a Blue Case

BTW.. They all still work !!!!

& it still works on the original battery quite well.

Fred

Technically, it's not a GPS, but I still have an old Rand McNally puck around here somewhere that you used with a laptop and RM maps that sorely lacked in road detail. It was pretty good for finding urban addresses and routing A to B on major roads. Not so detailed outside of cities. Circa 1999.

My one and only!
Sharcnet reconditioned and doing fine.

My oldest is the Delorme LT-20 puck. I think I bought it in 2005 or 2006. Used it with a laptop running Delorme Street Atlas USA. I always set it up in the back seat and let my son do the navigating from back there ... didn't want to be distracted or tempted to operate the software while driving.

Purchased in 1997. Still works and is used occasionally to feed raw satellite data to other devices.

This was my first handheld gps device. I bought it in 1997. It still worked the last time I tried it.

While not as old as some of the other units mentioned, I'm still using it for field work.

IQUE3600 - still runs on ancient maps.

In my junk box, but it worked the last time I powered it up.

I still have my old Garmin Streetpilot C430, and it still works fine... It's a lot slower and has a much smaller display than my newer ones, but it was my first GPS (I came late to the game...I never thought I needed one- I'm pretty good with maps). I don't have the heart to dump it.....

My 5 year old Nuvi1300WTGPS

Nuvi1300WTGPS

My Magellan Tracker, Magellan Pioneer, Magellan eXplorist XL, Garmin eMap, Garmin eTrex Venture. Collector's items in a way.

....that I gave to my brother-in-law a few years back. I don't know if he still has it, but I have a Nuvi 350 that I use most days of the week. Still going strong.

I have a GPSMAP 76S from the 80s. I used to use it hiking and doing rough plot plans for large sites. It is still a capable unit, but the monochrome display, speed and serial interface are not making it easy. https://buy.garmin.com/en-US/US/on-the-trail/discontinued/gp...

I still have a Garmin GPS 45 that works. When I upgraded to a GPS 12, it was so much better with the 12 channel parallel receiver and an antenna that I didn't have to worry about breaking, that the old GPS 45 just didn't get used much after that...

I too have a Garmin 45, a 45XL rom the mid-90's
it was my first

had to tell people it died so I could buy a newer one

I bought a huge Magellan unit in late 1991 or early 1992. It was powered by 6 AA batteries which would only operate it for about 2 hours. It had a single receiver and would use it only to try to track four satellites so if one of those was obscured, it would stop tracking while it tried one new satellite per minute until it found a set of four which were in view.

Needless to say there were no maps, only 100 waypoints, and preparing to use it on a trip involved lots of time on the floor making careful measurements from a survey map and doing math to convert them to coordinates.

In short, as a practical matter it was well-nigh useless, but it gave me hundreds and hundreds of hours of fun. At the time it was the best play value per dollar toy I had ever bought.

I have a Nuvi 660 that was purchased in 2007 and keep as a backup to my 2460LMT. It still has the original battery and I'm still amazed how well it holds the charge. It's been sitting in my desk drawer now for over two months, I turned it on and still shows full charge. When I do use it on battery power it works for a long time before losing bars.

My 2460 loses bars within a few minutes, been that way since day one when I purchased it new. The 660 is useful when using in pedestrian mode where I wouldn't trust the 2460.

From 1995. Never used for navigation, though, just getting the coords for solar eclipse expedition sites and observatory domes.

I think you may be off by more than a decade on that, as the 76S was released in 2002. But then, it seems like I have been using a GPS for decades too, although my first experience with it was only 9 years ago.

I recycled a 350 that no longer loaded the map. Afterwards, the 750 I still use is currently the oldest model.

I haven't used it in years, but am keeping it just in case.

Magellan marketed its NAV 1000 in 1989 which purportedly was the first consumer grade GPS receiver.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magellan_Navigation

My father and brother both owned one and my brother still uses his on occasion.

A brief timeline of significant events in the history of GPS gives some perspective on the subject:

http://www.techhive.com/article/2000276/a-brief-history-of-g...

I've got a Garmin 65, my first GPS. It just stopped working 1-1/2 yrs ago and I tried to bring it back to life by replacing the internal battery but that didn't work (Garmin won't support it any more).

It did freeze up during the year 2000 roll-over and Garmin took it back and re-did the internal program (for free I think).

Black and white, numerals only (no graphics or plotting).
Just lat/long, speed, distance, heading.
Cost me $985.00 new, and I used American Express to pay for it because that card got me double the warranty.

My old Magellan's box labels it a Magellan Nav 1000 Pro Model 31000. I don't think it differs in very interesting ways from the original Nav 1000.

I'm interested that your brother is able to use his. I turned mine on after the GPS week number rollover in 1999 and concluded at the time that it had failed to survive the rollover, unlike my more modern units (Garmin GPS III or III Plus at the time). Maybe I just was not patient enough to let it get its bearings (it always was impressively slow to get working from a truly cold start).

I asked my brother about the rollover issue with his NAV 1000 and how he got it to work. He had to set the date to a time prior to the rollover and manually tell the unit which satellite to acquire by using a newer GPS. This fix provides only limited functionality. The boot time can be considerable unless you have a good horizon.

He found the fix in a thread on another forum:

http://www.justanswer.com/electronics/43czg-recently-acquire...

Having had no personal experience with the unit, I can’t offer any additional advice.

Mine is a Garmin 12XL.

I still use it on occasion connected to a Kenwood TH-D7A ham radio transceiver to run APRS which is a positioning application using ham radio transmissions into an internet link so that I can be tracked if needed.
I use it as a senior official for the NYC Marathon or if I am traveling and my family and friends can check me out on a map.

Rob

i still have a handheld 4 AA battery Lowrance which I used to use with a laptop to read "Fugawi" charts. Then updated to a self powered hockey puck GPS antennae for the same purpose.

My days of using my trusty old 60GPS might be over. I've been experimenting with an iPhone app called Theodolite for my field work alongside my 60GPS. On my last trip, I just used my iPhone app and it worked fine. In fact it was even better because I could take a picture of the various points I wanted to plot.

I guess I'll just keep the 60GPS as an interesting item of "ancient" history for my grandchildren.

My oldest is a C340 that I tried to update to 2016.10 recently and could not get it to work. I don't use it anymore but just in case I like to keep them up to date.

Garmin GPS II in a box in storage.
Will need a gps to find it, though.

During an archeological dig in the garage, found some notes from 1995 on working with a prototype Trimble GPS receiver, mostly analyzing drift over time, suspecting their floating-point code.

765T... Great features and still going.