Quote Originally Posted by jpooh View Post
I see a 50LM "US lower 48 lifetime maps" in a 2nd hand shop with a mount. I need some quick and dirty.

1- can the mapping region be expanded just by putting maps on the sdcard? (it has a slot)
2-if so, can i just put an unlocked map in root \garmin to test it? will it display without the jvc's and such?
3-if that's okay, will the usual CNNA maps with these supplementary files (jvc, asr, etc) work in this or is it different? .......
1. It's LM for the US Lower 48 States, so you only need to add the rest of whatever else you need for NA [Alaska, Canada, Hawaii, Mexico can be cut from the full NA recommended by dasilvarsa with MS or BaseCamp/MapInstall] as a separate map on a microSD. So long as it's the same version, you can even add the full NA to the card as the data will be the same. Don't mix different versions covering the same map areas thought.
2. I would not put any such 'unofficial' maps in the unit of course. If you only have one extra map it can go in sd:\Garmin\gmapsupp.img. Note capital 'G' in the folder name. Or you can create a root folder Map [capital 'M'] and put the extra map/s in there as 'anyname'.img e.g. CNNT_2014.10_Rest-of-NA.img, *CA.img, *MX.img etc as a more descriptive title. It/they will display ok but without JCV because the unit's present file is going to be the 'US only' JCV supplied with the Lifetime maps [for US Lower 48 2014.10 it's D3479080A.JCV i think].
3. You will need the full NA JCV to get the other JCV's so that means replacing your US only one with D3478080A.JCV from Post #22 of the map thread. Don't have both, not even one on the unit and one on the card. Don't bother with ASR. Nuvi 50 does not have speech recognition.

35 smackers is a bargain if it's in good nick with LM so i'd grab it quick. Even if it's still registered to someone else you can get Garmin to re-register it and register it to you, but I wouldn't bother.
Just use Mapupdater not Garmin Express and you won't have a problem upgrading .