Two Plotters - copy chip??

[brucehawsker]

I have two plotters - the big Lowrance 7000C for route planning and for the Navigator, and a small 330C for depth and for heads up data to the helm.

I have only one chart chip. I have no objection to paying the £200 for that chip. But do I have to pay a second £200 for a second chip to go in the second plotter?

Can I simply copy the MMC card on my laptop onto a new blank 64K card?

What are the issues here - technically and legally.

Thanks

Bruce

[verado]

Do the Cards not have cracks in them to prevent people doing just this ?
Yes the cards are expensive but I guess it would constitute software theft if you did so. Very interested to see the replies to this question and if it can actually be done

[matt owen]

The cards have a special navionics format

[verado]

Does this mean unlike PC software that they cannot ? be copied or can they ?

[brucehawsker]

not sure if this is theft. I bought the card to use on my boat. Not to use in 'only one plotter on my boat'.....

[pmorgan]

Hi Bruce

This idea has crossed my mind too, as I have the 7000c as well and a second card would be useful to use in conjunction with the computer software for route planning. Your posting has prompted me to look into it a little further.

Are you sure that the card supplied is a MMC card and not a Secure Digital one ? I unfortunately left mine in the GPS and won’t be able to check till next weekend. These two cards look very similar but the Secure Digital one was specifically design for distributing copy write protected data and consequently the cards have built in functionality for data encryption, if this is the case then I would expect it to be difficult to copy.

Rgds

Pete

PS Secure Digital cards have a slider on the side to prevent accidentally write access MMC cards don’t.

[brucehawsker]

No slider. It is an MMC. Lowrance provided a reader for a PC so it seems unlikely there is much in the way of hardware encryption. 64M. The book says ' {Navionics Charts}... work just like Map Create custom maps'. That means we sholud be able to do Menu | Menu | Browse MMC Files | ENT and then highlight a file and then ENT to copy. That should copy the file onto a blank MMC.

Or do it the hard way using Windows, or if that fails, brute force using, in DOS, the infamous XCOPY F: C: /c /h /e /k /y which always seems to work.

Hmmm....

Bruce

PS does anyone know how 'X-plain' works? It is mentioned in the Navionics flier but not in the Lowrance brochure

[swginn]

You CAN copy Navionics Charts on MMC although it probably is illegal!!

Lets just say I've got this friend who has copied his Navionics Map for another friend using a Verbatim Card Reader/Writer. The map my friend copied was a Navionics Classic chart but worked perfectly just like the original. However as your chartplotters are colour, I presume they are Navionics Gold charts. I, I mean my friend has no experience of copying these but the idea should basically be the same just be sure to copy every file over including any hidden files that your computer may be hiding.

[codprawn]

[QUOTE=swginn] You CAN copy Navionics Charts on MMC although it probably is illegal!!

Why should it be - if you have already paid once and it is not for distribution you should be ok - all this opens a huge can of worms - I remember a shop being "done" for selling non region encoded DVD players - they had all their stock taken away and were prosecuted by amongst others Trading Standards. Not long later Tesco started selling the same things - Trading standards decided "We will take no further action on this matter"!!!

[brucehawsker]

My position is that if I copied a the files and gave them to someone else, or posted them on the web, I would clearly be in breach, although I am unsure if I could / would be prosecuted.

If I sold them to another party than I certainly could and probably would be prosecuted.

If I put them in my second boat (I don't have one bug enough !) then I would be in breach but sincerely doubt a prosecution would hold.

But to copy to put a second one in my single RIB, so I have a backup - essentially a repeat - of the map on my small screen in easy sight of the helm, with the big map for the navvigator - it is hard to argue that is a breach and it certainly seems unprosecutable....