Updating the Becker Cascade navigation filesystem

by Matt Sephton — Sun, 11 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I have a Becker Traffic Pro 7949 car audio and navigation system in my LHD Renault Twingo mk1. This unit, effectively a re-badged Becker Cascade with a green OLED screen rather than colour, was bundled with high-end sports cars of German and Italian origin, but I added one to my lowly Twingo because it’s a 1DIN headunit with great sound quality, navigation and music support from CF card, that gives spoken and on-screen turn-by-turn directions!

Even today the interface is rock solid and obvious, and the turn-by-turn directions pack a lot of information on screen. Below we can see (clockwise from top right): menu marker, ETA, distance to next turn as number and as shaded road edge, turn-by-turn arrow, traffic message control badge, remaining journey time, current road and next road.

A while ago I hacked the CF card structure to allow use of larger capacity cards to more easily store maps and music side-by-side. Good times!

Upgrading maps

The maps for this thing were long discontinued, but for a while users such as myself were able to use maps made for BMW’s business fleet (with partial postcode search) and more recently Mercedes-Benz (with no postcode search).

It’s also possible to add speed limit and camera data through injecting a new .lwd file (thanks SCDB!) into the split ISO filesystem. This relied on using Windows and some old apps.

Today I wrote a small shell script to do the same on macOS (and probably Linux, maybe Windows).

Back In Time: Vintage Maps of Akihabara (1976–2001)

by Matt Sephton — Sat, 11 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

I often browse old Japanese console and computer magazines. I’m mainly searching for old Hanafuda Koi-Koi video games, but sometimes I stumble across something else that is interesting in a totally different way.

In May 2019, whilst browsing an old issue of POPCOM over at the wonderful Internet Archive, I found a period map of the Akihabara 秋葉原 district—famous for its multitude of stores selling electronics, video games and other otaku goods.

I shared the map on Twitter, where it was well received, so I decided to go into this a bit more deeply here. Every so often I add any maps I find and there are now over 20 covering almost every year throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

Get in touch if you have a map of Akihabara from the missing years. The Japanese あきはばら地図 or 秋葉原マップ mean “Akihabara map”.

Further reading in Japanese: there’s a great article at NIKKEI that’s well worth a read. If you want something heavier, there’s a blog post with history of the area and its name change.

Thanks to my Patreon supporters for funding this research. New supporters are always appreciated!

Browse by Year

1976 … 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1987 1988 … 1991 … 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001

1976

The November 1976 issue of I/O magazine included a map of Akihabara which at this point was mostly radio electronics shops, with only very early signs of DIY computers.

Two maps can be seen in the combined book of issues from 1976 and 1977 that is available at Internet Archive. Hurrah!

1981

A map was featured in だからいまマイコン “So now Microcomputer” by the University of Tokyo Microcomputer Club, Shueisha, 1981. Amazon Japan link. Thanks to a generous Twitter user for posting this photo at my request.

1982

Missing: another one from 1982 on Twitter, if I’m reading correctly it’s from the book こんにちわマイコンに載 “Konichiwa Microcomputer”. Amazon Japan link.

Here’s a map from the January 1982 issue of I/O, also featured in the March 1982 issue which has different article about the shops so both are worth reading. Contrast with the much expanded map that appears further down this page in the 1984 section.

The first ever issue of Technopolis, in August 1982, featured a lovely map.

archive.org/details/technopolis-volume-1-august-1982/Technopolis%20-%20Volume%201%20-%20August%201982/page/154/mode/2up

Such maps make frequent appearances in Technopolis the one below is from an issue dated November 1982. Given its illustrated nature the map is somewhat stylised but the landmarks are easily recognised.

archive.org/details/technopolis-volume-4-november-1982/page/101/mode/2up

1983

A map was included with the January 1983 issue of Micom BASIC magazine. The below image is saved from a Yahoo! Japan Auction listing.

The map below is from POPCOM 1983-05 and is followed by 4 pages of listings that refer to the map using the A/J–1/10 key along its edge just in case you want to look some things up.

archive.org/details/POPCOM198305/page/n73/mode/2up

1984

This one from I/O 1984 May issue was found through Google and Wayback Machine, and I was lucky enough to be able to find matching scans on from Internet Archive. Compare with the earlier 1982 map from the same magazine.

1985

Missing: Weekly GENDAI 週刊現代 featured a map in issue 206, 13th July 1985. Auction link and image here.

This one I found referenced on Twitter, a lovely map from the April 1985 issue of POPCOM (complete with cover artwork by Hiroshi Okamoto)

archive.org/details/popcom-198504/page/122/mode/2up

1987

Missing: I found mention of maps in a 1987 issue of Be-VAP　ビ・バップ magazine, in fact there seem to be two. Auction archive is here with incomplete image one and incomplete image two.

One from 1987 on Twitter. This one I have tracked down as being from ラジオ技術　1987年6月号 the June 1987 issue of Radio Technology.

1988

Missing: I found one on Twitter from a 1988 issue of ぴあ “Pia” magazine, but so far I’ve been unable to find scans of it.

This one from Google, but thankfully also present on Internet Archive. From I/O アイ・オー 1988年07月号 the July 1988 issue of I/O magazine.

1991

Through Google I found a map featured in “AK gazette” from Winter 1991.

asahirom.blog28.fc2.com/blog-entry-58.html

1994

A partial map is featured in this article by NIKKEI which details the history of Akihabara and the phases of changes that happened throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Essential reading!

1995

There are three really cool maps in ゲームウララ Vol.1より Game Urara Vol. 1 featuring PC, video game and food/amenities. One was seen on Twitter and the other two were a happy discovery after finding the scans on Internet Archive.

archive.org/details/gameurara-vol1-1995-600DPI/Game%20Urara%20-%20Vol.%201/page/n101/mode/2up

1996

Whilst searching my ever-growing archive of Japanese Macintosh Media I found an archived copy of the Akiba organisation website on the Nikkei MAC CD Vol. 9, from 1997-02-15.

「ボーナスは大切にネ！!　秋葉原を上手に歩こう」 (“Take care of your bonus! Walk well in Akihabara.”) is a copy of the Akiba website dated June 1996, some four months before the earliest version in the Wayback Machine. A lot of the files that comprise the website are dated 1993, which I assume is when the site was first created. This sort of hand-built site really brings back some fond memories of the websites I built in the mid-90s: image maps, optimised GIFs, no content management system. Ah! The good old days.

The 250+ maps it contains are hyperlinked in a multitude of ways and the website navigates quite well considering its age. I’ve had most luck browsing using Netscape Navigator 3.01 (ja). The whole thing is quite comprehensive: maps are split into geographical zones and are detailed to a building floor level. Alternative lists by category and product type are also included. There are a total of 221 stores, of which 68 are member stores and receive more in-depth coverage with their own page and photos.

Check out screenshots of the website home page and main map page.

Another one from 1996 via Google, which was featured in the 「ASCII-DATES 1996」 notebook.

1997

From Google, I found a map featured in either PC自作派 “PC DIY” Vol.1 (1997) or Vol.8 (late-1998).

setoalpha.hatenablog.com/entry/2019/08/12/024509

1998

This new discovery reminded me of another vintage map of Akihabara that I had seen recently, only this time it was digital and available for platforms that were popular at the time: Palm OS (as a native app), Macintosh and Windows (as a FileMaker Pro interactive database).

All versions of these interactive maps can be downloaded at the following links:

I think of this map as the DogCow Map due to the domain it was hosted on at the time, but its official name is Kosapi’s Akiba Map 「こさぴーの秋葉マップ」named after the group of fans that created and curated it by documenting their trips to Akihabara.

web.archive.org/web/20041207024829/http://homepage1.nifty.com:80/akiba/index.html

1999

This one found on Twitter. A 1998/1999 issue of PC magazine DOS/V POWER REPORT featured a detailed map and list of stores. It would be really interesting to see if any of those stores still exist.

2000

Missing: around this time you could buy the 秋葉原攻略ハンドブック Akihabara Strategy Handbook which included comprehensive maps and shop guides across hundreds of pages.

The HTML version was typical of websites at the time: way too many HTML files and images with image-maps presented as a frameset that makes specific pages pretty much impossible to bookmark. Ah, the heady days of Y2K web development!

web.archive.org/web/20050212144103/http://homepage1.nifty.com/akiba/akibaweb2kr1.zip

2001

The digital download versions of Kosapi’s Akiba Map were updated until around 2001, when I guess easy access to the internet made offline maps like this somewhat less useful.

But the FileMaker Pro database is interesting, as it can still be loaded and viewed on modern macOS. Using a vintage Trial version of FileMaker Pro 11 from 2010 which just about manages to run on macOS 10.13.6—the database can be converted to a more modern format. You can click around hyperlinks to navigate and view business details in a very CD-ROM kind of way.

Anyway, I did a bunch of image grabbing and assembling to put together this large 27.8 megapixel version of the map (click the image below):

Aside: 1999–2009

For 10 years, an interactive online map was published by Impress Corporation under the title of AKIBA PC Hotline! It’s similar to Kosapi’s Akiba Map and arguably better made.

web.archive.org/web/19991012053357/http://watch.impress.co.jp/akiba/map/index.html

More?

I’ll be sure to add to this post if any other interesting vintage maps of Akihbara come to light. Especially for the years we’re currently missing maps.

Hacking the Becker Cascade navigation CF card

by Matt Sephton — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +0000

I just had my tonsils removed and whilst recovering at home I decided to try to figure out how I could use larger CF cards in my Becker Traffic Pro 7949 car audio and navigation system, a close relative to the Becker Cascade.

The unit came with maps on a 2GB card which is barely big enough for the maps, leaving not much room for MP3 files. Later map distributions increased the size of the card to 4GB as the map quality increased, but still not much room remaining for music.

Let’s go bigger

I bought a new CF card of the same type (SanDisk), opting for a SanDisk Ultra 8GB, and copied the files and volume name over. It didn’t work.

Next, I cloned the smaller card onto the larger card and that worked! Then I expanded the size of the partition and it stopped working.

What’s going on?

Partition Magic

At the time I had a ThinkPad laptop with a built in CF reader. This allowed me to look at the card contents at a device/block level rather than the filesystem level. I noticed that there was the usual space after the main partition, and low and behold what did I see at the start of that “unused” space? Some magic text!

HARMANBECKER BECKER V4

I even figured out the magic text for Ferrari branded units with the assistance of a helpful owner.

HARMANBECKER FERRARI V4

The version number would be increased in step with any updates to the system software.

By partitioning a SanDisk card and giving it the same file contents, volume name, and this magic text made the upgrade work. For a while I sold these modified cards on eBay for a nice little markup and it kept me in video games for a while. Good times!

Get Info: #maps