Thread: Garmin Marine Unit 8212 Charts

Garmin is Garmin my friend . It does seem strange on the surface that they would supply a unit with such a huge internal memory and no obvious way to write additional charts or for that matter any other files to it. Are you sure there's no USB port on the unit anywhere? It would be waterproofed so could be behind a hidden flap or panel on the rear or edge of the plotter. Another thought is that something can be done by Garmin using one of the NMEA ports, i really know nothing very much at all about the data transfer capabilities of NMEA sorry, but if that's not possible there's also it's WiFi capability to consider. If none of that's helpful I guess everything has to be done by SD card like with software updates and other data transfers such as Waypoints, Routes and Tracks [see p36 of the manual]. Interestingly, p36 also says this:

Before you can copy data to the chartplotter, you must have the latest version of MapSource® or HomePort software programs loaded on your computer and a memory card installed in the chartplotter.
Select an option:
• Copy the data from HomePort to the prepared memory card.
Etc ....

There's a strong implication in the above of a way to connect the 8000 series to a PC. Maybe it's just badly written and they mean the memory card is to be installed in the plotter after the data has been written to it.

You could also try to copy some files or folders from the unit to the SD using update.txt just to test that function without even first looking for the command in firmware. If you get that group pack then find your unit's correct firmware it should be easy to extract ldr.bin to use for SD text commands. Trying to write FROM the unit as a test is unlikely to cause any problems, but if it writes that way it should also write TO the unit as well.