Convert nuvi 1300 to 1480 jp

Actually from my limited experience a nuvi works at its best with the original firmware designed for it.
I'm back with US 5.90 no problem to revert either.
Jap firmware works but it's slow and POI search is BAD with loss of Pedestrian mode.
Lane Assist works on JAP but only appears when you are too close to the junction +- 400 m or less which renders it almost useless. Loss of pedestrian mode is also a -.
I've read in OTHER FORUM forum of people "having problem" with de Luxe as well and Alex himself has never advertised that the firmware is perfect.
The best advice is not to cross flash and use the original firmware that was specifically designed for the unit.

Hey Guys. I know what I did could brick my unit. But not because of the hardware. A lot of things could go wrong when you flash a unit (but all because of the software). What I was trying to say to alexander is that there's nothing especial on the hardware of the garmin units. I'm far from know how the software fully works. But when I was flashing I learned a few things. But it is like a computer. Theres the software and the firmware. And you must manage then perfecly or otherwise you will damage your unit. Thanks for all the advises especialy from alexander, Neil and Aekhong. But the only thing I want to undestand right now is why they believe my unit is about to became a huge brick. Which part of the asian software could brick my unit? Thats what I want to know. Thanks guys for all the posts.

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Originally Posted by dasilvarsa [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...]

Actually from my limited experience a nuvi works at its best with the original firmware designed for it.
I'm back with US 5.90 no problem to revert either.
Jap firmware works but it's slow and POI search is BAD with loss of Pedestrian mode.
Lane Assist works on JAP but only appears when you are too close to the junction +- 400 m or less which renders it almost useless. Loss of pedestrian mode is also a -.
I've read in OTHER FORUM forum of people "having problem" with de Luxe as well and Alex himself has never advertised that the firmware is perfect.
The best advice is not to cross flash and use the original firmware that was specifically designed for the unit.

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@dasilvarsa
Agree 100%.. it's best to stick with original, but it's fun to play with fw so long as you know and accept the worst-possible downside, as unlikely as it may be. I'm also aware that DeLuxe has its problems, and like you i've not tried it but believe the reports that it's laggy etc. My point was, and still is, that afaik it has never killed a device. Alex acknowledges it's not perfect but part of why they did it is to prove something to garmin. My other point is that if i badly needed routes (i don't) i would buy DeLuxe rather than use the basic method (thin conversion/blunt instrument?) which every one posting here (including cliny) knows to be risky. I would buy DeLuxe simply because i know it has been done with 'finesse' in way way that i don't hope to understand (as with my friend with the boot-loop) but just trust that it happens to be safe because of who created it. I hesitated to bring up DeLuxe because it may seem like i'm spamming (i'm not).

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Originally Posted by cliny [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...]

Hey Guys. I know what I did could brick my unit. But not because of the hardware. A lot of things could go wrong when you flash a unit (but all because of the software)............... But the only thing I want to undestand right now is why they believe my unit is about to became a huge brick. Which part of the asian software could brick my unit? Thats what I want to know. Thanks guys for all the posts.

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@cliny
Well, like i said: don't expect them to do that because it may involve exposing 'trade secrets', just accept that they can do things that we can't. The other thing is that guys like Alex see a disproportionate amount of dead devices caused by cross-flashing gone wrong, so its hardly surprising that they arc up when they see a thread that starts like this one. Caty mentioned that flashing 2x5 to 465 can kill and that's true, so then what is safe really? ;) "All's well that ends well".

If the firmware will write at least 1 byte in the region 43 - the unit will die. And for working not properly Japanese firmware, which writes data with errors to the region of 41 - it's real.

For 2x5W to 465 i flash over 30 device and all work OK,only change of country in CN is slow,but no other problem.

Flash only with pouchx FW 321 and then flash again with original 465 FW converted to rgn and renamed to 082701000321.rgn
and all work OK.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Alexander2010 [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...]

If the firmware will write at least 1 byte in the region 43 - the unit will die. And for working not properly Japanese firmware, which writes data with errors to the region of 41 - it's real.

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Thanks for your answer alex. Now I know the why. I'll leave this firmware in my unit to see how far it will "live". It will be my test unit for now on. I hope it last at least 1 year.

cliny
I'll try to present an easy example of how running Asian firmware oin your 13xx could make European firmware crash.
Let's imagine that the European firmware treats the 5th byte of the NV record number 0x1234 as an index of the current navigation mode (Pedestrian, Auto, Truck, ...), but the Japanese firmware treats this byte as something else, and, when being run, it rewrites the byte with some other value, say, 255.
Then the European firmware is flashed and it seems to work quite fine, except maybe the routing is a little bit strange (because 255 is not a valid navigation mode index).
But the European firmware crashes when the navigation mode selection window is opened, because it tries to read the current navigation mode name from an invalid location.

This is a just trivial example, and I suspect it's easy to be cured with NV clearing. But this example is totally real, and I've encountered it.

And now imagine that the bug is more complicated, in particular, the European firmware crashes when booting on devices that have some particular display language selected. So you wouldn't detect this bug, but some users would encounter it, and they wouldn't know how to fix it, because clearing NV is unavailable. However, the fix is still available(NV cloning), but the device is going to loose it's identity (UnitID, Serial Number) in case there is no NV backup, taken from it. Did you warn your users about making NV backups? Nope.

Now imagine that when booting the European firmware corrupts the 5th byte again in such a way that any Asian firmware crashes when booting also. Now the nuvi can't run any existing firmware. A few month ago this meant that the device would be effectively bricked, because NV cloning required at least one running firmware, but now there is a [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...]

Now imagine that the bootloader crashes due to some configuration corruption. This would be the end.

Now think carefully about the fact that really nothing prevents bugs from having all of the aforementioned properties, i.e. deadly crashes in the bootloader occurring only on certain devices, because the unit software is essentially a black box for us. In this case you can brick lots of devices while yours would be ok.
There easily could be a milder case, when the European firmware starts silently making routing mistakes or somethings else, thus worsening the user experience. Would this user try to restore the NV backup, that you probably didn't tell him to make? Nope.

So, I hope this post convinces you that software isn't so easy and predictable, expecially when you don't have a reliable access to the configuration (NV in this case) and you make something illegal (the Japanese firmware wouldn't run on the European devices without your hacking, so it doesn't have to be compatible at all with the European one).

Added a Moderator note in post n1, at least users can judge by themselves and decide ;)