Hi Julian,
The people you have been dealing with are idiots. It is really discouraging that there are those of us in the user community who seem to understand Garmin's products better than their dealers and many of their tech support staff. It's the lack of knowledge among the tech support people (and in the knowledge base they work from) that is most discouraging. It's too bad that the developers have not done a better job of educating the tech support people because they really do want to be helpful. Most of the information we have here has come about from some rather trivial testing exercises. Even more discouraging is that at least a couple of us have shared this information with Garmin tech support.
... There, now I feel better.
Yes, the solution is as simple as you described .. well, sorta....
- buy the City Navigator Europe maps,
- install Mobile PC US,
- install the maps and Mapsource,
- use the Mapsource unlock wizard to unlock the maps (
make sure you get the unlock code for the 20x that's tied to Mobile PC US),
** ... here's where you need to make a decision about Mapsource. If you want to keep the new version that installed with your Europe maps and does a prettier job of drawing the maps, you need to be aware that it can't find Mobile PC. So... **
- if you want to stay with Mapsource 6.14.x or newer, put an SD card in your card reader (if you have one) or plug in a USB flash memory stick that's big enough to hold the maps (City Navigator NA will just fit on a 2GB card. I don't know what size Europe will be.),
- in Mapsource, use the map selection tool to select all of Europe, or just those parts you want in Mobile PC,
- select Transfer > Send To Device,
- give it a minute to search for available devices,
- select "removable drive x:", where "X" is the drive letter of the SD card reader or USB stick,
- sit back and drink your tea while Mapsource does its thing,
- copy the
gmapsupp.img file from the \Garmin folder on the SD card or USB stick into the folder on your hard drive where Mobile PC US is installed. That is normally "\Program Files\Garmin\GarminMobilePC".
That should be it. You should be able to use both sets of maps happily with the 20x that came with Mobile PC US. Since they are for different parts of the planet, you can have them both selected for display with no conflicts.
If you want to have a Mapsource that will find Mobile PC and transfer the maps directly to it rather than having to mess with an SD card or USB stick, you will need
Mapsource v 6.13.7 installed. You sacrifice the lovely map display of the newer two versions but it has fewer problems. (The newer two versions have other problems besides the fact that they won't transfer maps to Mobile PC.)
To transfer the maps with Mapsource 6.13.7 you just need to select all the map segments in Europe that you want, select Transfer > Send To Device, select Mobile PC in the transfer dialog and Mapsource will do the rest.
If you have been reading any of the threads here regarding the two newest versions of Mapsource you may already know that some of us have both installed. I have 6.15.3 installed and then I also have just the executable for 6.13.7 also in the same folder but with a slightly different name. I have two different Mapsource icons on my desktop so I can use either one. I don't know why I keep both installed because I never use the newer one except when someone asks a question about it.
...ken...