Garmin Data Cards

On Sat, 27 Aug 2005 17:23:25 +0100, Peter
wrote:


Peter Clark wrote

The KLN94 cards are
specially formatted at King and can't be sourced elsewhere that I know
of.

The KLN94 data card is an off the shelf compactflash card, with a
hacked filing system (not the normal FAT16/FAT32) so that it cannot be
accessed in a normal digital camera sort of CF writer.

I don't know the latest on this but Honeywell used to sell a Sandisk
CF writer (which I have one here, never used it yet) for which they
supplied a driver which was hacked to write it. I believe they now
sell a somewhat more recent product - the Sandisk unit was
discontinued even at the time I bought mine.

The sandisk reader/writer that Honeywell sells (SDDR-31, they still
have some) for Internet downloads for the KLN94 will not format a
blank card, only combine with their software to write their datafile
to a preformatted card. It also has some special firmware (available
on their website for download) that you need to use for the
card/reader to be recognized. Unless someone has hacked the format of
the file system to allow end-users to create the special cards, you
can still only get a card that will work from King.

Unlike the internet downloads (which are fixed-up to the particular
KLN94 serial number) the CF cards aren't, and if anyone found a way to
duplicate them they could share the data among others.

The database key (which changes occasionally) is linked to the card,
not the unit. If you have multiple cards for one unit, you need to be
careful which DB key you use - write the wrong one to the card and
it's useless. Ask me how I know.... But you can take a valid card
and shove it in any KLN94 and it'll work just fine. Anyone who could
successfully duplicate the entire card, including the DB key storage
system, would have a fully functioning card for any unit.

I'd guess Garmin are the same

At least for the G1000 package, the Jepp Skybound software allows you
to format the data cards directly. Lose/damage/want a spare card,
whatever, just grab one with the right or more capacity and use it.
You don't even leave the navdata card in the airplane, it downloads it
to NVRAM and you take it with you. so it's not as inconvenient as the
King system if you don't have two cards.

I have a KLN 89/B and I put the wrong DBkey in the first time I used it.
I called Honeywell and they gave me a free extesnion to my subscription
and I just downloaded a new request using the correct DBkey. I didn't
wind up having a useless card. Now if I could only take the card and
program it and not have to take a laptop to the plane.


Regards, Ross
C-172F 180HP
KSWI

Peter Clark wrote:
snip


The database key (which changes occasionally) is linked to the card,
not the unit. If you have multiple cards for one unit, you need to be
careful which DB key you use - write the wrong one to the card and
it's useless. Ask me how I know.... But you can take a valid card
and shove it in any KLN94 and it'll work just fine. Anyone who could
successfully duplicate the entire card, including the DB key storage
system, would have a fully functioning card for any unit.


snip

On Mon, 29 Aug 2005 11:58:11 -0500, Ross Richardson
wrote:

I have a KLN 89/B and I put the wrong DBkey in the first time I used it.
I called Honeywell and they gave me a free extesnion to my subscription
and I just downloaded a new request using the correct DBkey. I didn't
wind up having a useless card. Now if I could only take the card and
program it and not have to take a laptop to the plane.

I didn't mean to imply that you couldn't reprogram the card with a
working database having a proper key.

And you can take the card and program it - get the reader from
Honeywell and flash it at home. Course, going to airport, get card,
go home, flash, go back to airport, install, watch it download for 15
minutes gets old. Spare cards are pricey. It would be much easier if
they just made a way for people to initialize their own cards from
scratch, but there's no profit in that for them.