@asprin624
I have no real wish to discuss this with you as it's clear our respective philosophical views differ greatly as to the very point of such forums' existence and purpose, particularly as to whether users of them should be helped in a meaningful way. I will say the following and then disengage from further debate: Suggesting contacting Garmin for any help or solution regarding this is at best pointless, at worst cynical - perhaps mocking even. Garmin has been fully aware that legitimate 3rd party ('unofficial') maps are blocked by their policy of firmware protections for many years now. They have shown absolutely no desire to reverse that 'side effect' even if initially it was an accidental and unintended result of their very legitimate attempts to stop ppl using 'unlocked' versions of their own proprietary maps. There is a very real difference between those two types, 'unlocked' (aka illegal pirated Garmin maps) and 'unofficial' (aka legal 3rd party maps) however the problem is that ppl cannot use some 3rd party maps without overcoming Garmin's protection against piracy. Any fair-minded reader should now see the quandary or paradox here. Garmin is the "Apple of the navigation world" in their consumer attitude. Apple makes it very hard for outsiders to use even genuine parts and it's near-impossible to use 3rd party parts in their newer products. Garmin does something similar as far as some map data is concerned. Why shouldn't i be able to change a broken screen on an iPhone 13 without disabling face recognition? That's a rhetorical question, it's the same reason that I can't use Mapear on my newer Garmin PDA. Those large corporations haven't really lost sight of the fact that their very existence depends on the ppl they are ultimately dependent upon, but they know if they p!ss off enough of them they'll lose a big chunk of business. So knowing that they walk a thin line, they just pay lots of money to behavioral scientists to advise them how far they can go before the blowback might become too intense to ignore. Apple doesn't care about ppl like me who can actually change a cell phone screen or the outside repair shops either. Similarly Garmin doesn't care about Mapear making a buck or not, or many other map-makers like them who have a small but cultist following. That's because the small numbers of those followers don't matter in the overall scheme of things to Garmin and it might be beneficial in the long term to put the other map-makers out of business... just like Apple might drive some 3rd party repairers into shutting down. Big corporations play a long-game.

In the unlikely event that enetilah or anyone else bricks his protected device by flashing patched firmware, I'll happily help them un-brick it without any criticism. I'll just not help with the actually patching, neither by making or posting files for that. However, in the event that a 'bricked' device is under warranty and cannot be fixed using software methods by me or others here, Garmin will exchange it anyway and that is fact.

Butters out.