GPSrChive Discussion Forum

I recently got my 66SR, stumbled upon quite some difficulties to setup everything (have a wide series of garmins so not the first setup i do).
Seems the 66sr only works good with older/slower SD cards fi.

But I also identified an issue related to multi GNSS.

So when you set your device in multiGNSS /multichannel setup, then power down, and then restart again, it completely fails to lock satellites afterwards... even after waiting for half an hour.

Switching to GPS only immediately locks satellites.
Powering down the 66SR and rebooting (so with gps only) immediately finds satellites.
Switching back to multiGNSS also immediately finds satellites.

Switching back to GPS only and powering down and rebooting again, immediately results in satellites found.
I've reproduced this many times, also informed garmin support about this and got an answer that the engineers are aware of this.

No answer on when this will be resolved so far.

There is a page they referred to :

Spoiler

https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=b ... 20handheld

but this contains tips like: try to reboot your device and see if that works.
Well...no, unless you switch to GPS only of course.
Hopefully this is fixed soon , because the main difference of the 66SR is exactly this no?!
And a bit stupid to have to switch to GPS every time before shutting down, and switching to multiGNSS every time after booting the device in GPS only modus.

There is a known issue with the current firmware that will be resolved with a future update.

Future firmware and micro software for when, it seems that at Garmin there are no more engineers capable of correcting errors, which may be the case. It doesn't take them months to do this I think.
Years ago the modifications were carried out quickly as soon as they were detected, I know that from having lived through this period.

In the meantime I use the much more reliable Cross Twonav.

I will postpone my purchase of the GPSMAP 66SR until these firmware updates are issued by Garmin.

Yeah I really do not understand why Garmin needs such a long time to fix this issue. The first report on this forum was in June 2022, and since beginning of August there has been mentions of it being fixed with an upcoming software update. It's five months later now...

It appears to me that the Multi-GNSS and Multi-band features of the GPSMAP 66SR are compromised by the poor performance of the existing firmware. It is inexplicable that Garmin has not released updated firmware after so many months.

While waiting for Garmin to fix the system, I tried the following method which works, but it's just a bit long, you have to put the 66sr in "GPS Only" mode, wait for the satellites to load, put "Multi-GNSS "Wait for the satellites to load then put in Multi-band mode and it works.

Thank you for posting the workaround.

Just picked up a GPSAMP 66sr yesterday and already run into the no-satellite acquisition bug in Multi-Band GNSS mode. Playing around with different settings this morning, I too found that putting into GPS Only mode, allowing acquisition, then enabling GNSS, allow acquisition and final enable Multi-Band works to get you up and running as mimichris indicates above.

All very frustrating, and somewhat concerning to see this has been a known bug for a long time.

Is there any news on when this Future Firmware update to resolve the issue will materialise? Since its been a long documented bug, I find it odd nothing has been done to fix the headline GNSS Multi-Band feature.

I notice on the Garmin site, here in the UK at least, you can no longer buy the GPSMAP 66sr from the store, the device is listed, but no buy options or out of stock notices. There's simply no buy or add to basket option while there for the other 66 variants.

Boom-Stick wrote: Fri Jan 13, 2023 7:59 pm Is there any news on when this Future Firmware update to resolve the issue will materialise?

"...20 minutes into the future..."