Garmin Mapsource Topo | Japan’s Map | North American Map Installation

By Joe Young

This article is continued from the Garmin Mobile XT GPS.

Japan's Map

Ok, when everything is all done make sure there is a check on the “Visit myGarmin Website” and click Done! Now we are going to go online and download the Mapsource program! The Mapsource program does the exact same thing as “Map Install” however it is much more precise and difficult to use so, since doing things the hard way is always fun, lets have some fun. Also, to take full advantage of your Garmin Mobile XT device, this must be done.

Ok, goto this web address and the version that we will be downloading for this demonstration is Garmin Mapsource v6.12.2. So download the program to any location on your computer and then click “Run” (that’s a nice transfer rate), you might be prompted to click run again, just do it. A nice blue Garmin screen will appear, just click on “Next”, again check off the check box “I accept this licence agreement” and click on “Next.” Mapsource will then do it’s thing and install without too much hassle I hope! At the very end it will ask you if you want to launch mapsource, just click on “Done” and hopefully mapsource will load.

Yai, we are almost done, we are now going to install the North American map, and if that works, then we will install my most favourite and best map, the “Japan Map 25000 v2″. I can’t live without this map, I swear this map has probably saved my life twice! We will now install the Japan Map (the greatest map of Japan that there is available for us people who can not read Japanese!) Put the CD in your CD-ROM. Double click on “setup.exe”, it will not auto-install like most programs so, just double click on the setup.exe and wait for about 2 minutes because it is a huge compressed file and you need to wait until it copies itself onto your hard drive and then tries to extract itself (approximate time is about 2-5 minutes). When it comes up and asks you to enter the unlock code, your unlock code is inside the plastic CD case, again I was confused with this, I even emailed the poor Japan map person complaining that he forgot to send me a serial number, when really he did, I just didn’t bother to look hard enough. So, click “Next”, then “I accept the agreement”, then “Next”, then type in the password. If you wish to change the installation path from “Program Files” to something else, choose the installation folder and then click “Next”. Then click “Next”, “Next”, “Next”, let everything install and you are almost done!

Ok, the next thing you want to do is to close down your Mapsource program that you still have open on your desktop and then re-open it. You should now see the North-American Map and the beautiful “Japan Map”. For our test demonstration today we will use the Japan RoadNavi 25000 v2.  You select the areas of Japan that you will be traveling to in the near future. For myself I live and move about this general area. So, I have selected this area. If you move about in a smaller area, select less of the map, if you need more, then select more, but the more you select, the longer the screen will take to refresh, so only select what you need. If you are going on a trip, then add some, when you are back, then delete some. Simple. Ok so we have selected our area! Then click on “Transfer” then “Send to device”.

Ok so we have selected our area! Then click on “Transfer” then “Send to device”. From here a window gets brought up, remember we only want to send maps to our storage card, sending them to an already small main storage memory is a bad idea at all times. Highlight storage card by clicking on it once, then click “Send”. This will usually take a minute or two to send all the data to your device, now the great thing is, is that if you happen to travel out of the area that you have selected, you still have the very generic basic world map from Garmin, so you can at least know where you are. And really that is all there is to it.. now lets go and play with our new GPS device shall we?

Download   GPS Europe Map