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If I understand... Garmin has reserved some of the Family ID codes for their own use, so locked maps which use these codes have stopped working. But it appears the fix is to just use another code. For our free maps, we make up own own FID's (or at least that's what I did) and just hope for the best. I guess the FID takes on some added significance if you are locking your map.

[I cannot give ANY guarantee,maps created with this tool will work at all]

Shouldn't it be the other way around? Did the maker of the third party map guarantee that it would work? The file Readme0097 which is included with cgpsmapper says

Please keep in mind - I have never seen any official specification for Garmin
maps - most of the work base on reverse engineering - therefore I cannot give ANY guarantee,
maps created with this tool will work at all - even more - I cannot give you
any guarantee, your GPS becomes operational after uploading maps created with
this program.

That seems pretty clear to me...

All Nuvi's use the same ball mount and suction cup. Some models (705, 805 and 5000 series) have an active cradle with contact fingers that engage the edge of the GPS. You can pop the Nuvi out without unplugging anything, which is pretty slick.

But if you are trying to prevent theft, you will probably want to remove the whole mount anyway so it may not really be that big of an advantage.

Ah, I see. Well at least we can still continue using the current version, and he said that version 2.0 didn't add any new features. Perhaps he could do away with the free version and gain a little more income from shareware if he can no longer sell the expensive pro versions?

Anyone who is serious about mapmaking surely couldn't object too much to paying the $30 shareware fee for such a great program (I own two copies myself FWIW)....

It's weird about the 500, it costs more.

As mentioned above, that's because it has both Topo and City Navigator.

Free map updates are a pretty new concept for Garmin, but I have recently seen them bundled at some vendors. You will need to shop around.

The newest series (1200/1300/1400/1600) are not well suited to topo maps. They really mangle the display in a number of ways. Contour lines are big and fat - wider than the roads. And wetland areas are rendered as though they were lakes instead of the swamp texture on other models. They also show very few road names.

These problems can be overcome by building your own custom types if you're making your own maps, but otherwise they are not so great for topo maps. Caveat Emptor. Other Nuvi models seem to be fine with topo maps, but you don't have as much control over their appearance as you would on a handheld.

I believe the Nuvi 500 has both topo and city navigator maps while the Nuvi 550 only has city navigator.

All of the current nuvi models record tracklog. In fact, they are always recording track and you can't turn it off. You can hide it and clear it, but not turn it off. And also realize that it's a one-way proposition on the nuvi. You can copy the tracklog from the nuvi to your computer, but you can't load a tracklog from the computer to the nuvi. So if you have tracks that you've saved from your 60csx, there is no way to send them to the Nuvi and have them displayed. The only workaround would be to make a transparent map from the tracklog, but that's kind of a hassle.

[locked]

I don't think this will really affect most of the authors or users here at GPSFileDepot. It only affects locked maps, and of course you need to purchase the expensive version of cgpsmapper to even create these. So personally I see it as a non-issue at the present time.

AFAIK, Mapwel doesn't support map locking, although the author said he would consider it in the future (guess that's changed now). One simple solution for people who sell locked maps would be to just unlock them and re-think their pricing and packaging. Maybe they could sell more copies if they were cheaper. Or maybe they could include some other materials (like printed copies or free updates) to make them more appealing than pirated copies.

Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems to me that Garmin is certainly within their rights to change their copy protection scheme at their whim. People who have built businesses on the basis of reverse-engineered unauthorized software have been taking a risk. I don't know what assurances you get when you pay $2000 (or whatever) for the full version of cgpsmapper. Did Stan ever promise that it would continue to work? Will he refund your money?

Indeed; there are about 6,600 segments in topo 100k and the file is about 3 gb. So you will max out on segments after only loading about 1GB of map data.

In Mapsource try View > Switch to Product. Do you see the map listed there? I am running mapsource under vista and have no issues.

That was exactly my point...

Here's something else which might be a little telling... Garmin's list of developers:
http://www8.garmin.com/cartography/mpc/

They may also be trying to force everyone to sign up with them and obtain the newest locking technology. And at the same time, they might not want some cgpsmapper-based commercial products to compete with their own. Notice how there is only one US developer, and it is only for skiing maps. They have 500 map products, and 420 of them are for European locations.

Read the section of this article starting on page 33: http://cgpsmapper.com/download/GM8DocV2.pdf

You would need to find out what kind of lines the author used for boundaries, then re-define them as a custom line color. This isn't too hard, but still might be more technical than you care to get into....

GPSMapEdit can open the .img files for you to discover the MP_TYPE that is used.

SendMap20 can be used to add your custom .typ file to the mapset.

[locked]

Based on a recent post on the Yahoo group, it appears that the sky really isn't falling. Evidently there is no problem using unlocked cgpsmapper files such as the ones we've been making around here. The issue appears to be that Garmin is making changes to their locking scheme such that locked cgpsmapper files no longer work correctly. A user in the GPSReview thread at the link I posted above was able to download and use one of the topo's from here without problems (although he didn't actually install on his gps).

Seems to me that locked maps are a completely different issue than free maps. I can see why Garmin might want to control these, and why they might not be happy with competing commercial products that use a reverse-engineered compliler piggybacking on their own user interface (mapsource) and copy protection. And the recent post at map authors implies that the real reason may be their desire for a stronger locking scheme to prevent piracy of Garmin's own maps.

Mapsource can't "open" any kind of map files. The maps need to be installed into mapsource and that is not trivial.

A .rar file could be almost anything... see: http://www.rarlab.com/rar_file.htm

What is a RAR file

RAR is the native format of WinRAR archiver. Like other archives, RAR files are data containers, they store one or several files in the compressed form. After you downloaded RAR file from Internet, you need to unpack its contents in order to use it.

You will need to first extract the contents of the file, then maybe we can tell you whether it's something which can even be installed on your GPS. Where did you find these maps?

That is not what I said! You would run the Map Install program with the card inserted into a USB reader connected to your computer. The software should recognize the card and allow you to install there.

See the mac instructions here: http://www.gpsfiledepot.com/tutorials/how-to-load-maps-on-my-garmin-gps-unit/#mac