Our current SD option may be dying...

Oldbitcollector (Jeff)

I've been noticing with glee that 1gig and 2gig SD card prices
have been falling like a rock. Tigerdirect has 1gig at $5.99
(without the silly rebate game)

Generally in the computer industry, larger storage options
replace those smaller options once they reach low price point.
In other words why use the same manufacturing system to
build 2gig SD media for $7.99 when you can make 8gig
media at a slightly higher price.

This happens all the time with hard drives.
Try to buy a 40gig drive..

It's my understanding that the current FSRW supports
up to 2gig SD media. Has anyone tested with larger?

This might need attention more than directory support.

Heads up?

OBC

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Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi)

The same 2 gig R/W limit was also a "feature" of PC BIOSes awhile back. It stemmed from the fact that 2_147_483_648 is the largest positive address that can be held in a 32-bit signed integer.

-Phil

Post Edited (Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi)) : 6/14/2008 5:33:46 PM GMT

Mike Green

The current SD card driver only supports FAT16 which is limited to 2GB because of the use of 32 bit addresses. Some I/O drivers were written using unsigned 32 bit values (for a 4GB limit), but it's not generally supported and can't be relied upon.

We've got a couple of years yet before the FAT16 SD card will become obsolete because of the huge base of digital cameras and PDAs that depend on them. Who knows what will take its place? USB memory stick interfaces may continue to drop in cost or, perhaps, wireless links may be used more for linking embedded processors with their development systems and some other kind of memory (not removable) will be used for local program and data storage. The SD card has the advantage of being cheap, physically small, moderately large in storage capacity, and modestly fast with a simple interface.

SpinHead

AFAIK you can still format an 8gb card to a fat16 2gb partition and mark it as primary, and logically first on the card and it will work, I have an 8gb card and it seems to work just fine

Jimmy

SpinHead

oh and BTW, if you want to buy a 25 pack of 2gb sd cards they are only $109 shipped to usa

Paul Baker

I have doubts that the 2 gig card will go away anytime soon, support for SDHC has only been making its way into electronic devices over the last year or two. Considering the vast amount of consumer products out there that don't support SDHC and the fact that there are still many devices being sold without SDHC support, it should be several years before the 2 gig cards are abandoned (dictated by consumer demand).

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Paul Baker
Propeller Applications Engineer

Parallax, Inc.