I wrongly formatted my garmin nuvi 465t and now my device is dead

Another OP "wrongly" formatted his nuvi.

Anyone keeping track on what percentage of the "wrongly formatted nuvis" are models that have the passcode lock feature and what percentage do not? Just seems to me that more nuvis that have the passcode feature get formatted than those that do not.

formatting them has no effect as the passcode is in protected memory.

Indeed formatting has no effect regarding passcodes.
But I'll bet those individuals who bought a Nuvi that was locked, either knowingly or unknowingly, didn't know that and figured the format would fix it.

Those Ebay bargains weren't a bargain after all.

Yea, I know that. But people dealing with a fence on the electronic bay of thieves or cutting out the middle man and breaking a window themselves are likely to try things like formatting, particularly if they think they can resolve the problem by getting someone to take pity on them and help them replace the missing files (which, of course, doesn't work either).

I'm just speculating that if we looked at the numbers that the percentage of Garmin GPS receivers that are "formatted" would be higher for receivers with passcode locking than would be expected based on the number of receivers that have the pass code option and those that don't. And don't forget that far from all Garmins that support pass codes will actually have that "feature" enabled. I doubt if even a majority of owners use the pass code.

I was trying to update on my Mac but it said the SD card (internal counted as SD) and that I needed to initialize. Clearly I wiped everything. I know this device is old but it's in perfect condition. Any chance of fixing this or is it too old to fix?

It is old, but I don't think too old to fix. You could simply buy a Drive 53 and you'd likely end up with the same features but have updated firmware. You may be able to fix this, but you'll need to make cure firmware for your 50LM first, then enter pre-boot mode and flash it.

The following link may assist you. You will need to create an account over at that site to see links however.

https://www.gpspower.net/garmin-receivers-firmwares/246273-g...

Glad you got it working again but why?

This thread was started back in 2013 and went into 2014 at which time the OP resolved his issue. But the thread was continued recently by “jbachandouris‘ whose issue isn’t yet resolved.

Because we are human and make mistakes. It is how we learn.