bertram31.com

With all the wisdom on this forum I’m hoping someone is knowledgeable about older Garmin GPS units.

I bought my GPSMAP840xs with the Canada chart package. Last year when we crossed into Canada all the chart detail disappeared. I contacted Garmin who told me I needed their Canada chart MICROsd chip. I bought it but it won’t install on my chart plotter.

Instructions from Garmin support don’t apply to my older model unit as they have gone to an online subscription download program. That didn’t stop them from selling me a $199 chart upgrade chip which I think really does contain the Canada charts. The support responses appear to be AI generated and are useless. Their AI did its learning on the new stuff, not my 12 year old model so none of it applies. The Garmin site is like a fortress, no contact phone number, no email and the chat function is a machine with canned responses. There must be more than a few Garmin units on Bertram 31s and I hope someone out there has dealt with this and has some answers.

This is the chip

What happens when you try to load the chip into the GPS? Does it give you any error codes? Or does it just say "unreadable"?

I have an older 740s. I had always used Garmin's Home Port software. But lately it seems they are not investing in that and I will have to go to their Active Captain software....and likely a new unit.

Steve, in the past when I’ve updated the software I inserted the chip, went through the download process and removed the chip when done after maybe 30 minutes. I followed the same procedure this time but no Canada charts came up. I did it a couple times and even tried leaving the chip inserted but still am seeing only the US and Great Lakes software.

Two minutes on the phone with someone familiar with the 840 equipment would probably solve the problem but there aren’t any phones at Garmin.

Have you tried taking a look at the contents of the chip in a laptop computer? Get an SD reader and see what files are on there. That may give you a clue. It could be in a different format than what your older unit reads. Like you may have guessed, it could be Canada files, but for a newer system with a new file format.