8.19.2009

Sony NV-U44 GPS

While at Fry’s today, I came across a cart full of discontinued (at least by Fry’s) and open box GPS units on closeout. I managed to snag a Sony NV-U44 (sans cables, software or mounting hardware) for $69- not too bad of a deal.

I immediately tried out the unit in my car and I was moderately pleased with interface and somewhat amused by the absence of POIs for things I would look for (Fry’s, MicroCenter, etc).

At home, I downloaded the Sony Nav-U desktop software and the 1.01 firmware update. I also noticed a banner ad for map updates for my Sony GPS unit; The update for 2008 to 2009 map data is $99- or $30 more than I paid for the original GPS unit…

A quick internet search revealed that there is one disc that supports all of the NV-U94T/U84/U83T/U74T/U73T/U44 units. Furthermore, the forum post was kind enough to provide RapidShare direct download links and a torrent file for download of the disc.

Another interesting piece of software that cropped up during this quest is the RapidShare Downloader form Major Share. This is an automated download tool that will watch the system clipboard for RapidShare download links, queue them up, and try to automatically download them (pausing a minute between downloads to allow the time limits to expire). The downloader also allows for filename search of files hosted on RapidShare.

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6 comments:

  1. I tried to download these files but after downloading all the files when I tried to extract it using winrar it gave me an error saying :

    ! C:\RapidShare\NAV-U.rar.001: CRC failed in NAV-U\Map\NA550D0000780808060357.SMF. The file is corrupt
    ! C:\RapidShare\NAV-U.rar.001: Unexpected end of archive


    Please advise...

    ReplyDelete
  2. David,

    If you are getting a CRC error, then one of the files in the set may be corrupt. The set I downloaded was intact, but I cannot be sure if you found the same ones as I did (they are periodically removed by Sony's request- and then uploaded by other people).

    All of the files except for the last one should be exactly the same size; if one is off by even a few bites, there is a good chance it is corrupt. If you find one that looks like this (or one that is in ALL CAPS where the rest of them are not), try downloading this file again and see if it resolves the issue.

    I think there was an '.sfv' file that came with the set I received; you can use a program like QuickPAR to verify the CRCs on the files via the .sfv. Alternatively, if there are any PAR/PAR2 files that accompany the set you downloaded, the same QuickPAR can repair damaged files.

    If all else fails, this update is being seeded by several people via BitTottent. Check out mininova.org or torrentroot.com for a search...

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  3. David,

    I just noticed that the file is .rar.001- which is not normal for a spanned RAR. Someone may have re-combined the files into one bit RAR and then split them up.

    Do a search for HJSPlit; it is a free program for splitting/combining files. Use HJSplit to combine all the files you have into one big RAR and try to extract...

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  4. Anyone know if there is a 2010 map update? Thanks

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  5. Anyone know if there is a 2010 map update? Thanks

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  6. Unfortunately, I doubt there will be many more updates; the GPS unit is over 2 years old and Sony's track record for device support has been terrible- I was actually surprised to find the 2009 updates...

    ReplyDelete