Garmin maps to 376c via USB

(generously submitted by Stuart Edwards of Ohio)

This is inspired by the writer that successfully made the 276c - USB transfer, and adds some details that might be useful.  My 376c was a xmas gift -- my wife delights in setting puzzles by buying non mac compatible electronic equipment (I'm still working on the weather station!)..  Having ranted to Garmin about their lack of compatibility (I see today that they will indeed support OSX this year), they did - to give them credit- direct me to this site.  After reading the 276c story, I figured that's got to be the way to go..  Well, nothing is that simple!  But I did eventually prevail.

I purchased a copy of VPC3  (including W98) from an internet vendor for $17.99 (10% of original retail) and loaded it into a G3 400MHz powerbook. running the recommended OS 9.2.  Garmin's Trip and Waypoint Manager loaded just fine and ran ok.  Now for the maps I thought.  Popped in the City Select North America V7 disc and ........... nothing.  Very puzzling.  The mac was reading the disc directory ok in OS9, but nothing in W98.

That's because it's a DVD and not a CD!  This blinding realization occurred on about Day 3.  W98 can't read a DVD.  So near and yet so far.  What to do.  I decided to try copying the DVD to disk and treating it as a directory since VPC3 doesn't have a problem with even quite large files.  Selecting the contents of the DVD and dumping it into a folder didn't seem to work, and I assumed that the disk must have some kind of copy protection.  I hunted around for a free copy program that would duplicate the DVD bit by bit.-- there are lots if you want to 'back-up' videos, but not too many that can deal with the ISO 9660 file structure on the Garmin disc.  Then I stumbled upon a dialog on a message board that provided a critical tip on how to duplicate a disc image to your computer.  Select the disc image, press the Option key and then while holding it down move the disc image to another (any) location on the desktop and drop it.  Voila! a nice copy in a file folder   Brilliant in it's simplicity.  Just establish this as a shared folder on VPC3 and fire up the installer.

So now it must just be a matter of loading up the maps .  Wrong again.  The installer starts, but hangs on a missing file.  Comparison of the directories of the new file and the DVD reveal some discrepancies.  The missing file "MapSource-CitySelect North America v7.msi" has 37+3 characters and probably violates the naming rules for FAT32, VPC3, W98, or OS9 (I don't know which and it doesn't really matter) and so it gets truncated and can't be found.  I renamed it mscsna.msi and then had to hunt around to see where it was used.  Turns out only to show up in 'setup.ini' which you can open with something like BBedit.  Change the file names on lines 31 and 91 (don't change the package names -- just the ones with a .msi file identifier). Then there is another 'can't be found' with ISScript9.Msi.  In my case, the 9 had been dropped and I just put it back and finally it all ran and after two attempts I loaded about a gig of maps into the mac.  

Having got this far, loading the maps to the 376c should be a breeze.  The supplied cable is nice, but hey, nothing is traveling along it!  I puzzled over 276c's instructions about looking for little arrows to activate the switch to USB, but either I'm going blind or the software has changed because I couldn't find them anywhere.  I decided to try 'install new hardware' in W98.  Well W98 couldn't find the unit when it ran the scan so I had to go with the 'pick from a list' menu.  Ah! there it is -- a GPS system  is what I have. But no.  That doesn't work.  You have to use the 'other' category with the big yellow question mark.  Then select 'have disc' and point to 
c:\Garmin\USB_Drivers\grmnusb.inf and it should install the driver.  

But still no connection. So I tried a highly technical maneuver and yanked the USB cable out of USB1 and stuffed it into USB2.  Amazing.  It worked..

Map transfer worked fine the first time (I moved about 9 Mb of maps to a 128 Mb card) and while it was a bit slow it was great to have it working.  That was on January 13th.  I suppose the least one can say about such things is the old adage "experience is cheap at any price".