I am in the process of setting up a ‘Carputer’ in my vehicle. I don’t have the actual computer as of yet, but I did get a MIMO 7″ touch screen LCD and used my Laptop as the ‘brains’. The main point, for me, was to have a turn by turn navigation program and what I decided on was Garmin’s Mobile PC program. The only problem with this is that they no longer support this program and getting it to work right, with maps and such, was kinda a pain in the a**. So let me walk you through what I did, and maybe it can make it easier for you:
First off you need the program itself. I downloaded the trial version from the Garmin Website. After downloading you will have a file named GarminMobilePC_50070.exe. If you open this file it will look for a previously installed version to update it (This won’t work since you don’t have one) Instead of double-clicking to install, change the extension to .rar by right clicking on the file and renaming it to GarminMobilePC_50070.rar,You will need a program which can open .rar files, Win-Zip, ect. After opening the archive, double click MAIN.msi and the program will be installed. The first time you launch it will ask if you have an installation code or if you want a 15 day free trial. Select the trial version and the software registers itself at Garmin.com and tells you when it will expire.
So now you have the program but there is no maps that come with it. The way I got around this was to do a google search for Garmin Mobile PC maps, you need “City Navigator North America”. I’m not going to tell you how I got it, or how you should get it, accept to say it might not be “legal” since Garmin doesn’t supply it or support this file any more. After you find this file you will have a file named ‘gmapsupp‘ this is the whole map and is around 1 Gig. Name this file ‘gmapprom‘ and place it in the folder located at the default Garmin install folder which is: C:\GarminMobilePC.
After doing this, start Garmin – click tools – Manage my data – Map Sets, and you should see it.
There you have it. You will also need a GPS receiver that works with Garmin, I use the GlobalSat BU-353 Waterproof USB GPS Receiver.
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