So, as a sort of conclusion to this thread, here are some baffling things that have been happening since (and probably before) the Wrinklies trip.
I was having great difficulty getting routes into my Garmin and even when those routes were created on my copy of Basecamp, my Garmin would tell me that they were created on a later version of the maps, which is odd because I downloaded the latest maps to both the device and the Mac at the same time.
When I ran Garmin Express, it told me the maps in my device were fully up to date!
Garmin support were excellently responsive and very interested in the problem, the young lady regaling me with tales of knocking her father's LT off its centre stand (when she rode into it on her 125) whilst I was going through various troubleshooting routines.
After a couple more calls following re-installation of the maps we finally had everything sorted but not without a fight!
Having changed the card in my Garmin, Garmin Express at last told me that there was a map update available so I installed the 'new' maps, only to find there was 'still' not sufficient space on my device, how surprised was I
Support told me to run Garmin MapManager! This showed I had two versions of the maps available on my Mac, 2015 and 2017.
I deleted the 'old' maps and re-ran Garmin Express. Still the same result, insufficient space on my device and still not giving me the option to install on the card!
OK say support, can you run Garmin MapInstall? Certainly! This program suddenly let me choose to put the maps on my card and not on the device and since there was now only one set of maps on my Mac, it finally installed the correct maps in the correct place!
So, to create and install a route on the latest updated maps, Garmin expect me to run five programs:
Garmin Express (which opens on connection of a device and checks for updates)
Garmin MapManager (which allows me to delete old maps)
Garmin MapInstall (which allows me to choose which areas to install and where to install them)
Garmin Basecamp (to drive me daft trying to create a simple route) and finally, to put my points of interest back in,
Garmin POI Loader (which unerringly does exactly what it says on the tin)!
Five different programs, count 'em, FIVE! And, none of these five disparate programs talk to each other and none have the ability to perform simple fault-finding routines or to tell you which of the five you need to use to solve issues!
So much for the Garmin side of things. Below is an extract from a mail to Kingston support following a very helpful and supportive phone call about my 'locked' card!
"My 32Gb Kingston card was bought about 2 years ago and was formatted as FAT32 on a Windows PC (since departed) and then inserted in my Garmin zumo 660 Sat Nav about 12 months ago. The maps were installed on this card (as the sat nav does not have sufficient disc space) and the whole thing worked OK for a couple of months and then the sat nav was turned off and not used for about 8 months. The card was left in the sat nav!
When I next tried to use the sat nav, I had to update the maps and the program (Garmin Express on my Mac mimi) could not find the SD card.
However, with the card fitted in the sat nav, Finder on my Mac shows the card as a drive, shows it has 29Gb free space and is formatted as FAT32! This is also true of File Manager on my Windows 10 PC.
After much trouble trying to re-format the card on the advice of Garmin Support, and failing, I took another Kingston 32Gb micro SD card out of the Drift Ghost camera in my car, re-formatted it and used that in my Garmin Sat Nav!
That second card worked perfectly and still is. I intend to leave that SD card in my Sat Nav as it takes over 3 hours to write the map files to the card!
The card I took out of the Sat Nav is discoverable on both my Mac and my Windows 10 laptop. I can view all the files on the card. I can write to the card but when I eject it safely and then re-install it, the files I have just written to it are simply not there!
Also, on both the Mac and the PC, I can delete all the files and folders on the card, but when I safely eject it and re-install the card, the 'deleted' folders and files are back again, as if by magic!
I have tried to format the card using both Disk Utility on the Mac and File Manager on my PC. Both devices tell me that the card is write protected and that the format failed.
I have ensured that the Storage Device Polices write protect is set to '0' on my PC!
I have downloaded the SD Formatter V4.0 from the SD card website and used that to attempt to format the card. This program also fails to format the card, even in Full (Overwrite) mode, again telling me that the card is write protected.
In all these cases I have tried to format the card using two different Kingston Card Adaptors (one shown in the photographs above) with the Lock switch turned off and also one SanDisk MicroMate USB card adaptor. All of these have failed to format the card.
I have tried to use the on-board format utility in my Drift Ghost camera and that also fails to format the card!"
Kingston were helpfullness itself, sympathising and asking all the right (write?) questions. They needed the part numbers off the working and non-working cards (which needed a scanning electron microscope to read the pico-lettering), didn't need receipts or proof of purchase and after sending them piccies of the front and back of the defective card along with the above info they confirmed that they would supply a new card, no further questions asked! They even went as far as to source a new card with the same part number as the working one out of my camera to ensure compatiblility with my Drift HD Ghost (they don't 'support' Garmin products)!
The card arrived this morning and they have a very happy customer for life.
Now, as for Garmin.....
They sent me a feedback form!
I was very complimentary about their support operators
I will leave you to guess at quite what I said about their software products
Brian (who still refuses to move to TimToy; stubborn to the end and he may be dead, but he was in the right
)