Good day, All:

Thinking of converting Drivesmart 61 LMT-S (HWID 2588) to its APAC variant (HWID 2996) with a view to having the Mandarin input method. After extracting both of .GCD files with RGN tool and searching for the P/N of PCB in the extracted fw_all.bin files, it appears that both PCB have the same parts number shown as 105-%05u-%02u when viewing with a Hex editor. When checking the Hardware Version in Device > About, the LMT-S version and APAC version show "V5 M4v3 P10 16GB DW128 Ma6 WBT" and "V4 M4v3 P10 8GB DW256 Ma6 WBT", respectively. Despite the difference in Hardware Version, I still would like to try my luck.

After going through a few threads in this forum, I reckon that it's safer to flash a hybrid firmware to see if the conversion is viable. To make a hybrid firmware, I am supposed not only to combine the RAM loader of 2588 with the remainder of 2996 but also to keep the HWID as 2588.

I just wonder if I should use the GUPDATE.GCD originally from the 2588 and 2996 machines or the firmware files downloading from Garmin when generating the hybrid firmware. In addition, as seen in RGN tool, the .GCD file contains 4 .bin files, namely boot.bin, resources_7F05.bin, resources_9E05.bin and fw_all.bin. Does the remainder of 2996 refer to the files of resources_7F05.bin, resources_9E05.bin and fw_all.bin from 2996? When setting the HWID by use of RGN tool, am I supposed to set the HWID not only in the firmware section but also in the Inventory and GarminDevices.xml by ticking the option of "Replace HWID text strings"? Moreover, should the SW version be set as that of 2996?

Would be grateful if a kind soul could shine a light on these matters.


Regards,

CL