How to Unlock Mio C230 Original Release

If you are a regular of my blog. You know that I bought a Garmin C320 last year. I liked my Garmin C320 a lot. I even bought a dash mount accessory for it. Unfortunately, the unit got stolen from my car along with the dash mount!!!I was on the market for a replacement. Garmin C320 is good but there are somethings that I would like to have for my new GPS. C320 is kinda bulky and it’s not truly portable. It uses an old generation of GPS chip which is slow to lock on the satellites. It also doesn’t speak the street name (Text To Speech, TTS). If I have an unlimited budget, I would just buy the Garmin Nuvi 770. I then found my dream unit, Mio C230. It fits my criteria and it’s available for under $190.00!

What’s even better about Mio C230 is that it runs Windows CE Core 5.0. You can hack it to do a lot of neat stuff. The best resource for hacking Mio is this forum. There are different hacks for different models, but there is no hacks for C230. I started experimenting by following this thread for C220. I tried different methods and the one worked is using the Script_3.24r downloaded from this site.

I fixed some of the problems I found. I also modified it to my liking.

• The original desktop’s Mio DigiWalker icon doesn’t actually run MioMap. I found it’s pointing to a wrong location. It’s fixed, but you sometimes might need to tap the icon twice to run it.
• Fixed power button issue so now it works under MioMap.
• The scripting engine MortScript was upgraded to the latest version, 4.1.
• The media player can play FLV files now.
• When you run MioMap, I also invoke a small utility called BananaPC. You can exit out MioMap without hard reset the machine. When you want to exit MioMap, go to the main screen. Press and hold the top edge of the screen in the middle. BananaPC would activate and show the menu. You can then choose to close MioMap.
• MioMap doesn’t usually close cleanly, so I modified the script to soft reset the machine after MioMap is closed.
• The background image was changed to Honda CR-Z. 😉

BEFORE YOU FOLLOW THE PROCEDURES TO MODIFY YOUR MIO C230. YOU KNOW THAT YOU MIGHT RENDER YOUR C230 UNUSABLE AND YOU MIGHT VOID YOUR WARRANTY. YOU DO THIS AT YOUR OWN RISKS. Ok, enough of that. Here are the steps.

1. Turn on C230 and connect it to the computer using a USB cable(not included in the package).
2. C230 is shown up as a flash drive called Mio Device. Mine is assigned as F drive. I’ll use F drive in the following steps. Substitute it with the actual drive letter of your system.
3. Rename the folder F:MioMapMioMap to F:MioMapMioMap2 .
4. Download MioC230r1.zip from this site .
5. Extract MioC230r1.zip and find the two folders MioMap and Script.
6. Copy MioMap to F:MioMap and copy Script to F: . The directory structure is like the screenshot.
7. Disconnect Mio C230. The device soft reset automatically and runs the file manager.
8. Use the file manager and browse to My Flash DiskMioMapMioMap . You might need to use a stylus to do it.
9. Tap AUTOPATCHER.exe twice to run the script.
10. C230 soft reset again.

If you hard reset the machine, the changes are gone. However, the hacked version of MioMap directory is still there. It would run the file manager again. Just follow the steps 8 and 9 to run the AUTOPATCHER.exe and you are good.

If you don’t like it the way it is, you want to undo everything. Here are the steps.

1. Turn on C230 and connect it to the computer using a USB cable.
2. Rename the folder F:MioMapMioMap to F:MioMapMioMap3 and rename the folder F:MioMapMioMap2 to F:MioMapMioMap
3. Disconnect the cable and hard reset C230 using the switch on the back.

I have done a YouTube video about what it looks like after unlocking. See it for yourself.

Don’t forget the other posts about Mio C230

• How to Unlock Mio C230 Release 2
• Plugins for Viewing Podcast on TCPMP
• Updating SpeedCam file for Mio C230
• Adding Custom POIs to Mio C230

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