GPS 45XL not locking?

So I received a Garmin GPS 45XL marine GPS from a friend. It came with
the external car antenna and the cigarette power adapter. I loaded
fresh batteries into it and headed out today, pretty sunny in the
Washington DC metro area. It powered right up and pulled up the
satellite screen. Then it just sits as it tries to acquire the sats.

Now this unit is a pre-2k unit, 1996 I think, and it also hasn't been
turned on a in a few years (not exactly sure how many). The unit came
from Maine, so it's moved several hundreds of miles to get into my
hands. It's also showing a date of 11 Aug 2005. I adjusted the time,
but was unable to adjust the date. I also chose US-VA as my country
for it to locate the sats. I've also tried the option just below the
country choice, Autolocate.

No matter what I do, it seems to just sit and not acquire the sats. At
one point it beeped and told me to push Page to receive messages. It
said poor GPS signal, but there was nothing, but open sky. I've read
the manual, I've scoured the net, and I still can't find anything
useful. I saw that these units had issues with EOW (end of week) and
I'm wondering if it's an EOW issue plus a y2k issue.

Any thoughts/ideas? Thanks!

DT

.

Relevant Pages

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