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Garmin 520 Cannot Unlock Map

Hello, I was recently given my friends old 520 to use and I wanted to install more detailed maps on it. Since it is a regular 520 and not a 520+ I would have to replace the basemap. I found a video and links from DCrainmaker using BBBike to create the .img I wanted to use and the loading it on the unit. However whenever I do that I get an error that says it cannot unlock the map. I saw a thread from a while back about how to use basecamp to get around this but the thread is gone. I haven't been able to import any of the .img files into basecamp or get the unit to like them. I have tried Garmin BBBBike (latin1), Garmin BBBike (UTF-8), Garmin OSM (latin1), Garmin OSM (UTF-8), Garmin Cycle (latin1), Garmin Cycle (UTF-8) and some others and so far nothing. Thanks in Advance for your help!

  • Did you remove the Garmin/gmapbmap from your Edge 520 and replace it with a renamed BBBBike map?  That should be all that is needed (what I do).  Do you still have a gmapbmap.sum on the 520?

    What firmware version has the 520?

  • I did remove the original basemap and save a copy on my laptop, then replace it with a renamed BBBike map. I left the gmapbmap.sum I only replaced the gmapbmap.img. The 520 is on version 13.20. Thanks!

  • Hi

    I've been using the Garmin Onroad (Latin1) format without problem. The UTF-8 versions didn't work. Maybe try a smaller map area to reduce the file size.

  • My Edge 530 has the same sort of problem. A free, non-commercial OSM based map is not shown at all, just because it was prepared using UTF-8. It is not shown in the list of maps either as if it were not on the device in an .img format.

    On the other hand if the same map is prepared with Windows-1250 (Central and Eastern European charset) all the labels/texts are shown as white ??????? with black rhombuses as their background.

    I have heard that the first phenomenon may be a bug coming from a battle again pirates (my source: https://openmtbmap.org/garmin/unicode-maps/#gsc.tab=0), but I have no idea why Garmin decided that Edge 530 should not display characters of 1250.