Garmin Database Cards?

Just a shot in the dark...does anyone know of a less-expensive source of GNS 430 database cards than buying them from Jepp or Garmin? As part of getting the -8 up to speed for IFR, I have to get my subscription going, and would like to have a second card so I can swap new and old every update...

$150 is a lot to pay for simple flash memory these days...(but, it is a captive market...)

Paul

database card

Ironflight said:

Just a shot in the dark...does anyone know of a less-expensive source of GNS 430 database cards than buying them from Jepp or Garmin? As part of getting the -8 up to speed for IFR, I have to get my subscription going, and would like to have a second card so I can swap new and old every update...

$150 is a lot to pay for simple flash memory these days...(but, it is a captive market...)

Paul

Click to expand...

When did the price go down the last upgrade I made cost me $200

casper said:

When did the price go down the last upgrade I made cost me $200

Click to expand...

Hey for $139 (from Jepp), you only get a BLANK CARD! If you want the database, you have to pay extra.....

Unfortunately the cards for the older Garmins (GNC, GNS 400,500) are proprietary and Probably will not come down anytime soon. On the bright side it looks like all the newer products (G1000, GMX 200, etc) uses standard SD memory cards.

If someone could get the spec on the older cards, they could develop and sell a cheap adapter that you can insert an SD card into and it will make it look like the proprietary card. SD card capacities are now up to 4 GB! This is similar to the cheap Compact Flash to PCMCIA adapters that allow you to use a Compact Flash card in you laptop with only PCMCIA slots.

w1curtis said:

If someone could get the spec on the older cards, they could develop and sell a cheap adapter that you can insert an SD card into and it will make it look like the proprietary card. SD card capacities are now up to 4 GB! This is similar to the cheap Compact Flash to PCMCIA adapters that allow you to use a Compact Flash card in you laptop with only PCMCIA slots.

Click to expand...

I've worked a fair amount making CF and SD hardware and software. So I think I can answer this question:

The reason that CF is easy to adapt to PCMCIA is because it was made with that in mind - by asserting a signal to a CF card you can tell it to go into 'baby PCMCIA mode' the rest of the work is just connecting wires.

SD cards have a low pin count and use a high speed serial protocol to get data in/out. From looking at the number of pins on my garmin memory card and thinking of when it was first released (1992 ish?) I think it is likely the garmin cards use some sort of parallel interface that multiplexes the address and data lines on the connector.

Therefore, to get an SD to garmin adapter you'd have to package and code a little microcontroller to do the conversion. This can be done (i.e. the cheap/common SD to USB devices), but for a small market like ours you'd have to charge a lot to make up for the engineering cost. It may not even be possible, because to pretend to be a parallel device you might need to emulate that devices timing. SD devices are serial so you might be faced with the latency to get to address X and give a response is too high to pretend to be a garmin memory card. If that happens, you're probably better off punting on the adapter idea and instead make clone garmin cards from scratch.

So, this is a long winded way of saying - I wish such a converter would be released, but its unlikely.

Group buy?

It's not just the card. You also have to buy the burner and the subscription. When I last checked into it, it was close to $1000 to get started and they had quit selling single updates. I've been flying for three years on the same database.

Maybe us Houston folks could figure out some way to chip in on a burner and subscription and pass out copies of the updates when we get together. The problem is making copies. Or maybe we just pass the burner and subscription password around.

kevinh said:

...
So, this is a long winded way of saying - I wish such a converter would be released, but its unlikely.

Click to expand...

Oh well, hopefully the next Garmin (GNS 600?) will also use standard SD cards. This is good info though. I wonder what the speeds on the Garmin cards are. The SD cards are rated at 900KB to 10 MB/sec or 20 MB/sec for 1.1 spec cards.

Unfortunately the cards for the older Garmins (GNC, GNS 400,500) are proprietary and Probably will not come down anytime soon. On the bright side it looks like all the newer products (G1000, GMX 200, etc) uses standard SD memory cards.

Click to expand...

I was looking at my 430's memory card, it looks like they simply put some card into their molded case. Their cards are about 250 times the going price for memory, quite a nice markup. If somone had a card which no longer worked, it would be interesting to bust it open and see what is inside.

There is some sport in trying to "beat the system".

Alex Peterson
RV6A N66AP 726 hours