approved list of SD cards for firmware updates

[pfarrell]

I know there is a list somewhere, but I can't find it.
Pointers please?

[Mark Lanctot]

http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.cgi?JiveBDK

"Firmware Update with SD Card" section.

[kdf]

http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.cgi?JiveBDK

[pfarrell]

thanks for the list.

I went down to my local Staples and they had tons of cards, but none small enough. Most of the ones on the rack were 2GB or 4GB.

They finally found a 1gb card behind the counter.

I know the SD/Logi guys are busy, but I'd suggest going to the local Frys and get some current 4GB units to add to the list. Granted, you can not have a 4GB FAT structure, but in theory, you could format a big SD with FAT and just ignore the rest of the card.

I also found that the little cards are not usefully cheaper, $20 goes from a 512 to 4GB. My local store had no 512s in the approved brands.

[kdf]

On 5-Oct-07, at 6:07 PM, pfarrell wrote:

>
> I know the SD/Logi guys are busy, but I'd suggest going to the local
> Frys and get some current 4GB units to add to the list.

it's not a case of testing and making a list. the problem is kernel
support for >1G.
Hopefully the newer kernel being worked on will solve the issue.
-kdf

[pfarrell]

kdf wrote:
> On 5-Oct-07, at 6:07 PM, pfarrell wrote:
>> I know the SD/Logi guys are busy, but I'd suggest going to the local
>> Frys and get some current 4GB units to add to the list.
>
> it's not a case of testing and making a list. the problem is kernel
> support for >1G. Hopefully the newer kernel being worked on will solve the issue.

Whatever the cause, when you can't buy them, it makes finding and using
them a bit of a challenge.

Is the newer kernel supposed to handle FAT32? as FAT16 maxes out at 2GB
because of design 'features' of 32 bit addressing

[MickeyG]

thanks for the list.

I know the SD/Logi guys are busy, but I'd suggest going to the local Frys and get some current 4GB units to add to the list. Granted, you can not have a 4GB FAT structure, but in theory, you could format a big SD with FAT and just ignore the rest of the card.



In coming up with the SD compatibility list, I bought one of everything at the local Fry's -- including 2GB and 4GB SD cards. kdf is correct -- it's a Linux driver issue which might get resolved soon.

When that happens, I'll pull out those cards from my drawer, try them out, and update the compatibility list.

Mickey

[pfarrell]

MickeyG wrote:
> In coming up with the SD compatibility list, I bought one of everything
> at the local Fry's -- including 2GB and 4GB SD cards. kdf is correct --
> it's a Linux driver issue which might get resolved soon.
>
> When that happens, I'll pull out those cards from my drawer, try them
> out, and update the compatibility list.

Yeah, after I wrote that, I was thinking that Fry's is probably not a
great place, since they have everything. And there are no Fry's within
1500 miles of here. So I'd like to revise the request, and ask you to go
to Staples or OfficeDepot or even BestBuy, and see what they have in stock.

I can imagine the driver handling 2GB cards RSN, I'm not sure that the
4GB are likely without FAT32 or other big disk support.

Pat Farrell
http://www.pfarrell.com/

[MickeyG]

MickeyG wrote:
> In coming up with the SD compatibility list, I bought one of everything
> at the local Fry's -- including 2GB and 4GB SD cards. kdf is correct --
> it's a Linux driver issue which might get resolved soon.
>
> When that happens, I'll pull out those cards from my drawer, try them
> out, and update the compatibility list.

Yeah, after I wrote that, I was thinking that Fry's is probably not a
great place, since they have everything. And there are no Fry's within
1500 miles of here. So I'd like to revise the request, and ask you to go
to Staples or OfficeDepot or even BestBuy, and see what they have in stock.

I can imagine the driver handling 2GB cards RSN, I'm not sure that the
4GB are likely without FAT32 or other big disk support.

Pat Farrell
http://www.pfarrell.com/

That's a good suggestion, Pat. There's an OfficeDepot on my way home, and I'll stop off there and buy what I don't already have.

Regarding the kernel ... the development is in progress to move to a Linux 2.6.22-variant kernel. From what little I see from googling, it may not have 100% perfect FAT32 support. We'll just have to wait and see.

Mickey

[snarlydwarf]

I would think whatever variety of FAT would work fine on SD cards, since it works on hard drives just fine (the difference being the physical layer drivers: there isn't any real reason the FS driver should know or care about the underlying physical layer -- the same fat filesysem drivers work on SCSI, IDE and USB drives and should work the same on whatever flash formate).

(likewise, 2G+ cards should work fine in an external USB reader where the USB-storage just sees another drive... but that won't do any good for Jive since it is direct access to the card, not USB.)

[pfarrell]

snarlydwarf wrote:
> I would think whatever variety of FAT would work fine on SD cards,

The problem is not the type of drive, its the size.
FAT was invented in the days of 8" floppies. Its efficient when you have
disks holding less than one megabyte. It uses 16bit addresses, or some
such crock which stopped at 2GB. There were no 2GB disks when FAT was
current and useful. FAT32 was invented when 1GB disks were around. It
had ugly hacks for 32GB disks for a while, but has gotten better.

I'm not sure I'd be willing to use FAT32 on terabytes of data, it begs
for NTFS or EXT3 or something with a bit of redundancy.

But this is rapidly moving OT.

--
Pat Farrell
http://www.pfarrell.com/

[snarlydwarf]

I'm not sure I'd be willing to use FAT32 on terabytes of data, it begs
for NTFS or EXT3 or something with a bit of redundancy.

But this is rapidly moving OT.

I wouldn't either: but what format do you think external drives come preformatted as?

(Hint: FAT.)

Linux has supported fat32 for years.

Look at the man page for mount:

fat=12 / fat=16 / fat=32
Specify a 12, 16 or 32 bit fat. This overrides the automatic FAT type detection routine. Use with caution!

Usually this is mounted as 'vfat', but on linux that is just a layer over the fat32 drivers (to handle the windows odd-long-filename support).

Again, fat32 isn't the issue: drivers for whatever flash-controller is used in the JHB is the problem. Shouldn't be an issue at all to have a fat32 SD, no more than it is an issue to have a fat32 USB drive (ie, it isn't an issue other than it sucks for things like hardlinks, case and permissions that Unix loves and fat32 hates).

[mflint]

Re: support for larger SD cards

As far as I can tell, there are firmwarey issues which aren't related directly to filesystem drivers, something to do with the way more stuff is crammed on the devices. But I did have the impression that this was a limitation on the controllery bits* in the hardware rather than the O/S driver for the hardware layer. And if that is the case, then this may not be solvable with simply a kernel or firmware update.

(The USB SD-card reader I have still won't recognise cards larger than 1Gb)

But anyhow... Mickey talks about 2.6.22 kernel, and I've seen on the Wiki that this is stored (twice) in flash.

This is all very reminiscent of my recent hackings of the Kurobox (http://www.revogear.com/). That device has a flash partition for U-Boot, one for U-Boot config, one for a flash-resident kernel, and one for a root filesystem. It may well be possible for the Jive end user (at their own risk, of course) to upgrade the flash-resident kernel.**

(I upgraded the U-Boot in the flash of my Kuro, to gain 2.6.x kernel support, and I'm encouraged that Slim Devices / Logitech have always been more supportive and more open than Buffalo)

Ramble over...
M



* I know all the techie lingo

** I'm not volunteering to brick a Jive remote than I don't have yet

[snarlydwarf]

As far as I can tell, there are firmwarey issues which aren't related directly to filesystem drivers, something to do with the way more stuff is crammed on the devices. But I did have the impression that this was a limitation on the controllery bits* in the hardware rather than the O/S driver for the hardware layer. And if that is the case, then this may not be solvable with simply a kernel or firmware update.

Right, the Nokia770/800 series had a similar problem, which has apparently been updated, but without knowing whatever the SD controller chip is, it is hard to say where the limit is... but since those who play with the kernel say that an upgraded kernel promises better hardware support for that chip, I'll trust them.

But, yes, the problem would be at the controller level, not the filesystem: the filesystem code for fat32 goes back to the 2.0 kernel and should be fine or people would never get external USB drives to work.

[pfarrell]

So I learn something every day. The box on my SD says "FAT" which I assumed was FAT, not something nouveau like FAT32

[snarlydwarf]

Well, fat32 first came out in Windows95 OSR2.... so it isn't exactly new.

(It was fat32 that originally had the 32G limit, which moved to 128G... but only using Windows tools. Upping the cluster size extends that to terabytes, but by that point fat32 is, as you point out, extra stupid. For mysterious reasons, Win98 would let you format a fat32 up to 127.5G, but then XP dropped that back to limiting you to 32G using MS tools....)

There are plenty of better file systems, but FAT works on everything so it has portability as a major advantage at least for removable media. (Easy enough to use a USB keychain to move files between Windows of various flavors as well as MacOS and Unix.)

[greebowarrior]

I've just tested 4 of my 5 Toshiba 2.0GB SD Cards (Part #SD-M02G) and can confirm it's working correctly in my JHB

(the 5th is in my Wii, as a backup for my save games and VC games, and there it shall stay :p)