A hit and a miss
Tapping the resources of the Georgetown cruising community via the morning radio net, we have managed to replace our handheld VHF radio that died after going for a long swim back in Norman’s Cay. Fortunately for us, another PDQ owner had a brand new spare VHF radio that he was willing to part with.
Our search for chartplotter chips has sadly not been so fruitful. When we were contacted by another boater who let us know that he had at least one of the charts we were after, we were very excited. Unfortunately, although the data on the card is what we are looking for, the card format is not correct. Our Garmin plotter takes the flat SD cards. The search continues.
NOT the format we need. 🙁
I thought that Garmin provided an online service where you can download maps that you require?
Hi Michele
This is true and I have looked into this. I am a little nervous doing so though given the internet connections here. The other downside to this process is that the chips then become locked and can only be used on our chartplotter. This is OK but if you buy the chips they could be used in another plotter, allowing us to sell them in the future should we choose. I am in the process of trying to have them ordered back in our hometown and we can have someone bring them to us in 2 weeks.
Could copy the one you were shown on to your computer drive then down load it back ? isn’t there accessory that will plug to both your comp & plotter ?
No, they are copy protected and it is some proprietary card shape I believe.
Hi, I’m wondering if a solution could be just to use a multi-card reader and your laptop to simply copy over the charts you require?
There are card readers which will read/write to almost any time of card: (this one over 60 types of cards)
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=5311077&CatId=2825
Hi Scott
We have computer charts but want the charts on the plotter, not on the laptop. I am pretty sure this card will not fit into a standard card reader, nor be read by one.
The cruising community is very generous, both with material and information. What a wonderful group of people.
That they are.
Are you certain that this is not just a microSD card encased in a fancy carrier?
I am not at all convinced of that. In fact, I tried to take it apart as the label says that it is a micro SD card in an adapter. I didn’t want to break it though and thus couldn’t figure out how to get it apart. I welcome some advice as it is still in my possession.