E120/E80 crash with Platinum+ cartridge

[Fricchione]

I've been using my E120 (cockpit) and E80 (Nav station below) pair since our boat was built in 2007. I'd love to upgrade to more modern radar and displays but the honest answer is that these do everything I need them to do and so its tough to justify an upgrade.

On this years vacation, however, I was moving up Vineyard Sound towards woods [censored] (in the fog) when the E120 crashed. When it came up, it crashed again. And again.. In case it was an integration/Communications issue, I went below deck and shut down the E80. Still crashed. What now?

I pulled the Navionics platinum plus cartridge (904P+ NE and the Canyons) and sure enough, it stayed up. Assuming that the cartridge might be bad, I put in an old Platinum (but not P+) cartridge and, again, it stayed up. Now I could at least get where I was going in the fog.

I called Raymarine on this. After verifying that my firmware was the latest version (5.69) the tech's best thinking was that the data on the card for that particular area (generally Woods [censored], MA and Martha's Vineyard) was beyond what could be held in the physical memory of the unit (512MB) and thus the problem.

I can believe the technical statements being made, but its unclear why its crashing on this years trip to the islands and didn't cause problems on prior trip. I don't believe the cartridge and the firmware have changed in 2-3 years.

Has anyone else run into this? If so, what did you do?

[Chuck - Raymarine - Moderator]

Welcome to the Raymarine Forum Fricchione,

The E-Series Classic MFDs were designed for use with Navionics Platinum, not Navionics Platinum Plus cartography. The significantly larger quantity of data stored on the Platinum Plus chart cards may dramatically slow screen redraw and may in some cases, overwhelm the processing capabilities of the E-Series Classic MFDs, causing instability of these MFDs as you have reported. Additionally, the quantity of cartography stored on a Platinum Plus chart card cannot be manipulated as it can be on a Navionics+ chart card ... now the most commonly recommended chart cards for use with the A/C/E-Series Classic MFDs. As the hardware and software of these MFDs can no longer be changed/updated and Navionics continues to producer cartography products marketed as being compatible with these MFDs, it is recommended that such issues be reported to Navionics in order that Navionics may be investigate and ultimately provide a chart card(s) which will be compatible with your MFD.