Re: [tlug] 2G SD Card Adventures on a Zaurus

[Edward Middleton <edward@example.com>]

Alain Hoang wrote:
> Edward Middleton wrote:
>   
>> Alain Hoang wrote:
>>
>>     
>> Which shop offered to let you try? The one I went to said they wouldn't.  
>>     
> DOS PARA (http://www.dospara.co.jp).
>   
I guess you were the second customer who had asked ;)
>> I was hoping it was a driver problem.  SD is a proprietary protocol so
>> the drivers still have bugs.  I  have not had time to check but I  
>>     
> The Linux drivers for the sd card? The sd cards themselves? Or the firmware driver on the sd card reader devices?
I was referring to the kernel driver, but if it is any of the above then
there is hope.  If it turns out to be a limitation of the hardware, then
it will obviously never work.
>> believe 7XX series use 255 series cpus which are limited to single
>> channel MMC/SD.  Our 2G SD card may not support this mode of operation.  
>>     
> I'm not familiar with single channel MMC/SD or x-channel. Is there a good overview on the technical aspects for sd cards that I can read up on? I'm curious about it but my lame googling attempts didn't bring much in the way of good technical beef.
>   
There is not a lot of information because it is a proprietary
technology, the best I found was.
http://mmc.drzeus.cx/wiki/Linux
There is also quite a bit of information on the arm Linux mailing list.
http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/mailinglists/
http://news.gmane.org/gmane.linux.ports.arm.kernel/cutoff=23220
>> I did however read that these particular SD cards have upgradeable
>> firmware so it might be possible. I was also told by the shop I bought
>> the SD card from that the Zaurus would work with the 1G model of the
>> same card so it might just be a Linux driver bug.  
>>     
> I was told the 1G cards also work on the Zaurus as well. Too bad I 
> didn't pick one of those up. How do you upgrade the firmware on sd cards?
It probably has some proprietary commands that upload the new firmware.
>  If the protocol is proprietary, seems like the tools to upgrade the firmware might be proprietary or Windoze-only.
>   
The cards don't work in a lot of devices.  I suspect that they will get
a lot of returned cards which might prompt them to resolve the problems.
>> If you format the sd card make sure you don't use fat16.  If you do it
>> will become a 1G card and you will have to use the tool on the following  
>>     
> Eh? Why so? Actually I think in my testing I ended up formatting the sd 
> card as fat16 in Windoze and I don't remember it 'becoming' a 1G card. But maybe I better double check up on this. Maybe I have a 1G card and I just don't know it.
>   
I honestly don't know, but when I formated the card in an old camera it
formated it to a 1G fat16 drive.  I couldn't format it back under
windows or Linux.

Edward