Magellan eXplorist HACK

Magellan eXplorist HACK !!

I like messing around with things, and I had a bit of time to waste tonight so.... I decided to see if I could turn my GC into a 310. Well it turns out you can, and here's how...

** Disclaimer:
The procedure I will describe works for me, but you are the one that ultimately takes the risk while crossflashing your GPS. This likely will void your warranty although as it turns out it is possible to turn it back into a GC easily enough.

HACK the Magellan eXplorist GPS 

1-First thing to do is make sure you are running gc firmware version 1.7, I dont know if this is important, but mine was at 1.7 when I started so I will recommend the same. 

1.7 can be found here

http://support.magellangps.com/support/index.php?_m=downloads&_a=viewdownload&downloaditemid=265&nav=0,18,24,62

2-Connect your GC to your computer and update to 1.7 if you haven't already, also make a backup copy of the entire contents of your GC (you can use this later to restore if you have to)

3-You will need to get a copy of the 310 firmware version 1.12 and version 1.17 

Both files can be found here hosted by cacher Allory

http://gawisp.com/perry/magellan/

eXplorist 310
eXplorist 310 firmware update

http://support.magellangps.com/support/index.php?_m=downloads&_a=view&parentcategoryid=24&pcid=18&nav=0,18


4-Both files are a self extracting executable, but we dont want to run them we want to take the files from them, so you will need to extract their contents to a separate folder for each one using winzip or winrar etc.

5-For some reason my GC will not run 1.17, it keeps saying "restarting to improve performance" and it gets stuck in an infinite reboot loop so that is why we run 1.12, but we do need a couple files from 1.17 (at least I think we do, you could try skipping this step but it is something I did so I know that it works). In the extracted files of 1.17 go to the folder titled "copy group 5" and copy the 4 files from there into the root folder of the GC. ( the root folder is not a folder titled root, its just the main folder as in D:\ or whatever drive letter your gc shows up as, but I will call it D:\ for the rest of this)

6-Disconnect the usb and let it reboot, it will say installing update and will eventually reboot but it will still be a GC, thats good.

7-Reconnect the usb. Make sure you have a backup of every file on your GC, and then completely delete everything on it, do not unplug the usb at this point or there could be serious trouble. Create a folder in the root of the GC called "App"

8-Now we will need to browse to the extracted files of 310 v1.12, and start copying some over;
-- in copy group 1, transfer the demo folder to D:\App\
-- in copy group 2, transfer all 6 files to D:\App\
-- in copy group 3, transfer the one (QtCore4.dll)  file to D:\App\
-- in copy group 4, transfer all 7 files to D:\App\
-- in copy group 6, transfer all files to D:\App\
-- in copy group 8, [optional]  transfer the (Geocaches) folder to D:\ (this may create itself but just to be sure put it there any way)

9-Now you are ready to disconnect, it will reboot and ask for language settings etc, and may reboot once on its own, but you now have a green Magellan 310

10-The basemap is now gone, but you can reinstall a new one using the Vantage point software as it has one included. You can also install various other free maps from websites like http://www.magicmaps.ca


Have fun!

Side note, when you have it hooked up to vantage point it will probably tell you that a newer software version is available. Dont bother running the update as it will just fail anyway. Even though it is now a 310, the installer will throw up an error saying that it isnt a 310.

If at any time you want it back to being a gc, just delete everything on it and copy your backup files back onto it.