Magellan 4040 Firmware Upagrade to 2.36

The forum below is one location that is starting to develop for Magellan Maestro series units. There is one more site that has info on POI creation called "POI-development" forum. If you have new information or comments on the 4040's operation, the site below is a good location to display that info..

http://www.poi-factory.com/forum/13

Thanks!

Hello Atangel. I am very frustrated as are several out their owning the 4040 trying to get the 2.36 firmware update. I have called Magellan almost every day for two weeks and they keep telling me tomorrow, tomorrow,etc............Any chance someone out there who has the down load can offer it to us? I purchased the voice upgrade and traffic support however, my 4040 firmware is 2.04 and the upgrades require 2.24 or higher to work. I am giving Magellan until this Friday to get the updated firmware 2.36 then I will do like several others and return my unit for something else. Anyway appreciate your thoughts.

I haven't a server, however, it is a 100+ MB download.... And I suspect that if they took it down, it might have created more issues than it solved (I think my unit is less accurate after the firmware)..... I'm wondering what 2.36+ will look like and what issues they encountered.

If I were you I would wait. I have a 4040 and have used it quite a bit and it has been a wonderful unit up to and including the 2.24 update. I downloaded the 2.36 update that was on the web site for a couple of days and then disappeared. Well, my unit is not working as well as it was and the screens are real touchy when selecting them. Sometimes, they either won't select or they flash back to the screen you are trying to leave. The accuracy is now off by a block and before it was right on. At least this has happened to me twice now on accuracy. I am upset they put out an update that was obviously not ready for prime time. At least they could have not removed the previous update from the site. I think I would have tried to download it again. I would not condemn the 4040 just yet and I think you made a good purchase. All brands have problems with updates from time to time. I think it is one fantastic GPS.

Thank you both for your comments. I have been considering another unit however, I really do like the 4040 so guess I will give it a few more days. I am just up set that you buy a new unit then purchase upgrades for it even offered on the suppliers web site then find out I spent money and cannot get the current firmware required to use the upgrades. Anyway I agree they must of found some significant bug to pull 2.36 off the site so I will wait it out for a while. thanks for your comments.

Ron---
I just noticed that the 2.36b update was on the Magellan site and I downloaded it over the old 2.36. I have not had a chance to test it but it seems to have solved the touchy screen problem with the earlier version. I am doing a simulator mode now and it looks good. Will be using the unit tomorrow for a three hour trip up into the North Carolina mountains so that should be a good test. Taking the grandkids to Bryson City for an evening on the "Polar Express" train ride and festivities. Those with grand kids probably know about the Polar Express story and book.
Glenn---

Glenn-- Well as my luck would have it, I got fed up with Magellan support Friday so after checking for the firmware update which was NOT their at the time I took my 4040 back to the Dealer and exchanged it for the 4250. Well after returning home to register my 4250 I saw the 2.36b firmware had been released. O, well let me know how it works out for you. My thinking was that I purchased the traffic Kit and Voice upgrade for the 4040 however my unit had 2.04 firmware on it so I could not use the upgrades. As you know we all beat to death tech support to no avail so I went with the 4250 which has all the functions bult in it and is a much more compact unit. It also had all the features I wanted without hanging the traffic module and external antenna on the unit like the 4040. Why did I stay with Magellan, well Garmen and TomTom units were sold out and I did like the features and presentation of the 4040 & 4250 plus the exchange was even in dollars for me.

Hate to rain on anyone's parade, but the re-released firmware is identical to what was released last week....

It makes no sense (really, it is identical, to the byte size and still shocked I ran a MD5 hash against both exe files and the hash was identical as well).

I will call tech support this week and complain about the accuracy issue. My screen is a little touchy as well.....

I just installed the 2.36 update and it seems to work fine, the whole process took about 15 minutes, so not too bad. I'll check in a bit to see if they fixed some of the street names which were mis-pronounced or just wrong.

David, like you my test of the 2.36 update worked very well with a rather complex trip requiring a good test of the 4040. I lost signal one time for about 6 seconds but it recovered well. We were in a large grouping of mountains and I expected that might happen as it does with satellite radio. Ron, glad you got an upgrade and as I said earlier, Magellan's new series GPS are being totally and unfairly reviewed for whatever reasons quote "reviewers" have. I can't explain why my unit works good now if the upgrade 2.36 was the very same as the one they took off of the web site earlier. No question, there was a change in the 4040's response. I am happy with it's operation. Have another long trip set for first of Jan. so it will get used and then some.

I hashed both downloads and they were the same (MD5). I noticed a drop in accuracy after the firmware upload.... either of you notice?

I just installed the update and noticed today that when you hit the direction button it used to show me what offramps and onramps I had passed or coming up to with distance and names, now all I get is just the distance. Check it out and tell me if you get the same. I think this is a downgrade if this is so.

Rory

4040 ver.2.36

I am not sure what the "direction button" is. Do you mean the arrow showing your position in the center of the screen or the button on the top left? I don't ever remember having used the function you speak of.

If you select the button in the upper left corner of your screen it will show you things like altitude compass rose speed LAT/LON and what you passed or going to pass as far as intersection go.

After downlaoading the 2.24 update for the 4040. Lost the fuction of showing exits on interstates. Worked with the 2.04 version. Downloaded the 2.36 version and it still won't show the exits on interstates when you push the direction key on top left hand corner of the screen. Does anyone know of a fix??

I just received the 4040 for christmas and so far it seems good. Just recently though, the unit, after a long period of being off will not aquire the satallites. I have to go and check the 'GPS Status' and once I return to the MAP, it will have all bars. Anyone else have this problem? I know Magellan says it can take up to 10 minutes for the unit to aquire a signal but at one point I have waited longer. Also the 2.36 upgrade is on their site but everytime I click to download it, it takes me back to the register my product screen. I called and they told me to check the site after Jan. 1st 2008, as the site is under construction. Anyone else get this response from them? I don't want to download a faulty upgrade, only to be left waiting for the fixed version to come out whenever they get around to it. Also, is it required to download the firmware upgrades in succession? Or can I jump form the 2.04 version to the 2.36 version?

thanks!!

I have the 4040 and aquires a signal in lest then 5 seconds, even inside the house. I have trid to leave it off drive more then 100 miles and turn it on and the signal is right there. The only time it had problems when it there was a snow storm and I left it off drove about 5 miles and turned it on, took about 10 minutes. But thats much like bell express vu when you have a thunderstorm coming you lose the signal.

What Magellan doesn't tell you........
There is OFF and then there is off (standby). Both are accomplished with the same button.

Push it for just a second and it goes into standby, during which it still tracks the birds (if it can) and a fully charged battery will last about a week.
Powering up from this state will give you a sat. lock real quick.....since it was not really OFF.

Hold the button down for 5 sec. or more and it will be really OFF. Powering up from his state will show a blue Magellan screen and a "loading" progress bar (cold boot). When really OFF, battery lasts a LONG time but it may take several minutes to get a sat. lock.

That Firmware Upgrade been posted on before. Please refer to http://www.poi-factory.com/node/7607

Hi I'm new here and am trying to upload the 2.36 update to my 4040 and it errors out. Any ideas? I'm following the instruction and have 2.24 install and using a 1G sd card.

Seems like I saw somewhere that a 2G card is required....wish I remembered where that was !!

Is your 1G empty to start with?

I'd suggest removing any Custom POIs (and anything else on the card or that you have added internally), then try a larger card (2G is the max.) before you call Magellan for help.

The card is empty and according to magellen it only requires a 15M card for the firmware upgrade so I figured the 1G was ok..

Yep, you would think.
Good luck!