OT Is an micro SD card a micro SD card?

I notice you can buy 64M ones.

I just got a free tablet for my credit card points and the
instructions say only FAT 32 and up to 32M.

Why would the tablet not support a 64M one?

BTW my first hard drive was an external IDE 64M. It was as tall as
2-5.25 drive bays. It was about the size of a loaf of bread and it
weighed......a lot.

I Googled for a picture of one. No luck. Maybe one of you guys have
better search skillz.

On Sat, 26 Oct 2013 21:30:49 -0400, Metspitzer
wrote:

I notice you can buy 64M ones.

I just got a free tablet for my credit card points and the
instructions say only FAT 32 and up to 32M.

Why would the tablet not support a 64M one?

BTW my first hard drive was an external IDE 64M. It was as tall as
2-5.25 drive bays. It was about the size of a loaf of bread and it
weighed......a lot.

I Googled for a picture of one. No luck. Maybe one of you guys have
better search skillz.


This is a floppy drive, but this is pretty close to the same size:
http://www.vintage-computer.com/imag...mod1floppy.jpg

The case was molded plastic and the drive bays were horizontal.

Metspitzer wrote:
I notice you can buy 64M ones.

I just got a free tablet for my credit card points and the
instructions say only FAT 32 and up to 32M.

Why would the tablet not support a 64M one?

BTW my first hard drive was an external IDE 64M. It was as tall as
2-5.25 drive bays. It was about the size of a loaf of bread and it
weighed......a lot.

I Googled for a picture of one. No luck. Maybe one of you guys have
better search skillz.

Check here, for why there is a 32GB breakpoint on SD.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Digital

I have no idea what happens when you mix them, from
a capacity breakpoint perspective.

*******

Look for a picture of an old ST506, to see what
a "full height" drive looked like. They were huge.

http://www.memofixdatarecovery.com/b...ve-300x224.jpg

Page 7.

3.25" high for a full height drive.

http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/p...nual_Apr82.pdf

It would take two 5.25" slots in your computer
case, to hold one of those. Conventional modern
computer cases, appear to have "half-height" tray
areas. I just checked that with my ruler :-)

I think someone at work casually commented that
we were paying around $1400 for that old tech.
And were glad to have it, because the previous
alternative, was our "stack of 8 inch floppies".
LOL.

Paul

On Sat, 26 Oct 2013 21:30:49 -0400, Metspitzer wrote:

I notice you can buy 64M ones.

I just got a free tablet for my credit card points and the
instructions say only FAT 32 and up to 32M.

Why would the tablet not support a 64M one?

BTW my first hard drive was an external IDE 64M. It was as tall as
2-5.25 drive bays. It was about the size of a loaf of bread and it
weighed......a lot.

I Googled for a picture of one. No luck. Maybe one of you guys have
better search skillz.

I bet you meant GB, not M, unless M is a new abbreviation for gigabytes.
And I bet the hard drive was 64 MB, not 64 M.

One reason that the tablet doesn't support 64 GB is that the maker
hasn't tested it for all such microSD cards, and they won't make a claim
that might invite a lawsuit.

I have successfully used 64 GB microSD cards on machines that don't
claim to support above 32 GB, but YMMV, and if you're not lucky, it
*will* vary :-)

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)

On Sat, 26 Oct 2013 22:18:45 -0400, Paul wrote:

Look for a picture of an old ST506, to see what
a "full height" drive looked like. They were huge.

http://www.memofixdatarecovery.com/b...ve-300x224.jpg

That looks like a picture of an opened drive sitting on top of a metal
box, maybe its own case; The ST506's were not as high as the picture
seems to show.

I'm going to look at your other link to refresh, or add to, my knowledge
of the 32 GB barrier.

I'd like to add, before I look at that link, that people have recommend
the use of exFAT on large SD cards, but in the couple of places where I
tried it, the devices seemed to be happier with FAT (actually FAT32,
IIRC).

Other than the link, it's time that I get off the Net :-)

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)

Metspitzer wrote:

I notice you can buy 64M ones.

I just got a free tablet for my credit card points and the
instructions say only FAT 32 and up to 32M.

Why would the tablet not support a 64M one?

BTW my first hard drive was an external IDE 64M. It was as tall as
2-5.25 drive bays. It was about the size of a loaf of bread and it
weighed......a lot.

I Googled for a picture of one. No luck. Maybe one of you guys have
better search skillz.

It was probably an MFM drive, not IDE.

--

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety,
deserve neither liberty nor safety. - Ben Franklin

On Sat, 26 Oct 2013 19:28:26 -0700, Gene E. Bloch wrote:

On Sat, 26 Oct 2013 21:30:49 -0400, Metspitzer wrote:

I notice you can buy 64M ones.

I just got a free tablet for my credit card points and the
instructions say only FAT 32 and up to 32M.

Why would the tablet not support a 64M one?

BTW my first hard drive was an external IDE 64M. It was as tall as
2-5.25 drive bays. It was about the size of a loaf of bread and it
weighed......a lot.

I Googled for a picture of one. No luck. Maybe one of you guys have
better search skillz.

I bet you meant GB, not M, unless M is a new abbreviation for gigabytes.
And I bet the hard drive was 64 MB, not 64 M.

One reason that the tablet doesn't support 64 GB is that the maker
hasn't tested it for all such microSD cards, and they won't make a claim
that might invite a lawsuit.

I have successfully used 64 GB microSD cards on machines that don't
claim to support above 32 GB, but YMMV, and if you're not lucky, it
*will* vary :-)

Showing your age are we?
I had a machine with windows 3.1.
I"m not sure what size the drive was but I can guarantee you it was under
100 megabytes.
When gigabyte drives came out they cost around $1,000.

Circa 1996 or so I recall paying $300 for a 400 meg drive.
As the technology improved on the disk size, the cost came down.
I can now buy a 2TB drive for less than $200.

Gene E. Bloch wrote:
On Sat, 26 Oct 2013 22:18:45 -0400, Paul wrote:

Look for a picture of an old ST506, to see what
a "full height" drive looked like. They were huge.

http://www.memofixdatarecovery.com/b...ve-300x224.jpg

That looks like a picture of an opened drive sitting on top of a metal
box, maybe its own case; The ST506's were not as high as the picture
seems to show.

I'm going to look at your other link to refresh, or add to, my knowledge
of the 32 GB barrier.

I'd like to add, before I look at that link, that people have recommend
the use of exFAT on large SD cards, but in the couple of places where I
tried it, the devices seemed to be happier with FAT (actually FAT32,
IIRC).

Other than the link, it's time that I get off the Net :-)


All I seem to be able to find, are angled shots of those things.

Does that look like a full height faceplate to you ?

https://sites.google.com/site/fortec...hdd/ST-506.jpg

My memory is getting a bit foggy now, from looking at
too many "storage slabs" :-)

Paul

richard wrote:
On Sat, 26 Oct 2013 19:28:26 -0700, Gene E. Bloch wrote:

On Sat, 26 Oct 2013 21:30:49 -0400, Metspitzer wrote:

I notice you can buy 64M ones.

I just got a free tablet for my credit card points and the
instructions say only FAT 32 and up to 32M.

Why would the tablet not support a 64M one?

BTW my first hard drive was an external IDE 64M. It was as tall as
2-5.25 drive bays. It was about the size of a loaf of bread and it
weighed......a lot.

I Googled for a picture of one. No luck. Maybe one of you guys have
better search skillz.
I bet you meant GB, not M, unless M is a new abbreviation for gigabytes.
And I bet the hard drive was 64 MB, not 64 M.

One reason that the tablet doesn't support 64 GB is that the maker
hasn't tested it for all such microSD cards, and they won't make a claim
that might invite a lawsuit.

I have successfully used 64 GB microSD cards on machines that don't
claim to support above 32 GB, but YMMV, and if you're not lucky, it
*will* vary :-)

Showing your age are we?
I had a machine with windows 3.1.
I"m not sure what size the drive was but I can guarantee you it was under
100 megabytes.
When gigabyte drives came out they cost around $1,000.

Circa 1996 or so I recall paying $300 for a 400 meg drive.
As the technology improved on the disk size, the cost came down.
I can now buy a 2TB drive for less than $200.

The first hard drives (for personal computing) we had
at work, were 5MB and 10MB drives (probably ST412 and ST506
drives). I managed to put two years worth of text documents
on the 10MB one before I ran out of space.

The reason that was possible, is the average file size
back then was a lot smaller. We didn't have a lot of
image files, because there were very few terminals to
view them on. (The average machine had a 80x24 screen,
not a graphics screen.) There were no movie or music files,
no Flash video. Just ASCII and stick art drawings.

As a result, I could put thousands of short documents
on that disk. Whereas now, just a single PDF download,
would have entirely filled that disk.

*******

I think those early drives may have used a stepper motor,
to move the heads radially. (Sort of like a floppy,
only higher quality.)

http://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/2...seagate_14.jpg

So much crude crude stuff. All that jelly bean logic on there.

http://www.allatsea.co.za/retropics/st412hdd.htm

But Seagate made good money from those things.
They weren't cheap.

Paul

Metspitzer wrote:

my first hard drive was an external IDE 64M. It was as tall as
2-5.25 drive bays.

Not really, it was as tall as a full-height drive bay, half-height
drives came later, followed by half-height drive bays ...

Metspitzer wrote:
I notice you can buy 64M ones.

I just got a free tablet for my credit card points and the
instructions say only FAT 32 and up to 32M.

64Gb, and 32Gb, I think you mean. I've only skimmed the thread and may
have missed someone giving this answer already.

SD cards come in 3 types. The earliest type only supported FAT16, and so
were limited to 2 gigabytes. Later came SDHC, using FAT32 formatting,
and limited to 32 gigabytes by controller and firmware limits. The
latest ones are known as SDXC, they still use FAT32, but have a much
larger limit on their size (Terabytes, in potential, once they make the
memory cells small enough). I have only one device which will use them,
and that's an HD video camcorder.

The controllers on the device motherboard are all backwards compatible
so modern controllers will drive all formats, but early controllers are
not forward compatible, and I have a few older devices, including a
laptop and a couple of early cameras which will only use the original 2
gigabyte SD cards, which are getting harder to buy as time goes on.

A 64 *megabyte* card will work in all devices, a 64 *gigabyte* card won't.

--
Tciao for Now!

John.

"John Williamson" wrote in message
...
Metspitzer wrote:
I notice you can buy 64M ones. I just got a free tablet for my credit
card points and the
instructions say only FAT 32 and up to 32M.

64Gb, and 32Gb, I think you mean. I've only skimmed the thread and may
have missed someone giving this answer already.

SD cards come in 3 types. The earliest type only supported FAT16, and so
were limited to 2 gigabytes. Later came SDHC, using FAT32 formatting, and
limited to 32 gigabytes by controller and firmware limits. The latest ones
are known as SDXC, they still use FAT32, but have a much larger limit on
their size (Terabytes, in potential, once they make the memory cells small
enough). I have only one device which will use them, and that's an HD
video camcorder.

It's a great shame that equipment manufacturers are *still* using FAT rather
than NTFS filesystems, because it makes it a bummer if you want to store
files that are larger than 4 GB - not a problem for a still photo but it can
be for a long recording on a camcorder.

Since our DVD player doesn't work as a client to a Windows "server" (ie
accessing a drive that Windows has shared), the only way to play recorded
files on it is by USB HDD or pen/thumb drive. But you need to remember to
reformat the drive as FAT32 in order to get it to recognise the drive. I now
keep one of my ext drives as FAT, as a transfer drive.

But it would be so much easier if they standardised on NTFS to get round the
4 GB/file limit.

I suppose Microsoft charge a licensing fee for equipment that uses NTFS. And
anyway, you may want to read your camera card on a machine that doesn't
understand NTFS - if any such equipment still exists.

On Sat, 26 Oct 2013 23:47:30 -0400, richard
wrote:

I can now buy a 2TB drive for less than $200.


Less than $200. US Dollars?

They are *way* less than $200. A quick search on "2TB HD" on
Amazon.com, and the first two items listed were $88.99 and $84.95.
Look around a little and you can probably find them for even less.

Even 4TB drives are way less than $200. The can be bought for $150 or
so.

On 27/10/2013 04:54:29, Paul wrote:
richard wrote:
On Sat, 26 Oct 2013 19:28:26 -0700, Gene E. Bloch wrote:

On Sat, 26 Oct 2013 21:30:49 -0400, Metspitzer wrote:

I notice you can buy 64M ones.

I just got a free tablet for my credit card points and the
instructions say only FAT 32 and up to 32M.

Why would the tablet not support a 64M one?

BTW my first hard drive was an external IDE 64M. It was as tall as
2-5.25 drive bays. It was about the size of a loaf of bread and it
weighed......a lot.

I Googled for a picture of one. No luck. Maybe one of you guys have
better search skillz.
I bet you meant GB, not M, unless M is a new abbreviation for gigabytes.
And I bet the hard drive was 64 MB, not 64 M.

One reason that the tablet doesn't support 64 GB is that the maker
hasn't tested it for all such microSD cards, and they won't make a claim
that might invite a lawsuit.

I have successfully used 64 GB microSD cards on machines that don't
claim to support above 32 GB, but YMMV, and if you're not lucky, it
*will* vary :-)

Showing your age are we?
I had a machine with windows 3.1.
I"m not sure what size the drive was but I can guarantee you it was under
100 megabytes.
When gigabyte drives came out they cost around $1,000.

Circa 1996 or so I recall paying $300 for a 400 meg drive.
As the technology improved on the disk size, the cost came down.
I can now buy a 2TB drive for less than $200.

The first hard drives (for personal computing) we had
at work, were 5MB and 10MB drives (probably ST412 and ST506
drives). I managed to put two years worth of text documents
on the 10MB one before I ran out of space.

The reason that was possible, is the average file size
back then was a lot smaller. We didn't have a lot of
image files, because there were very few terminals to
view them on. (The average machine had a 80x24 screen,
not a graphics screen.) There were no movie or music files,
no Flash video. Just ASCII and stick art drawings.

As a result, I could put thousands of short documents
on that disk. Whereas now, just a single PDF download,
would have entirely filled that disk.

Yes, .docx word files are much larger than .doc files, but newer Excel
files saved as .xlsx are so much smaller at about 25% of older .xls
files, strange.

--
mick

"Evan Platt" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 26 Oct 2013 23:47:30 -0400, richard
wrote:

Showing your age are we?
I had a machine with windows 3.1.
I"m not sure what size the drive was but I can guarantee you it was under
100 megabytes.
When gigabyte drives came out they cost around $1,000.

Circa 1996 or so I recall paying $300 for a 400 meg drive.
As the technology improved on the disk size, the cost came down.
I can now buy a 2TB drive for less than $200.

My first computer was a 8088 XT with 2 whopping 10 MB drives. MFM.

Still have the invoice for it.

http://www.espphotography.com/smokinpc.jpg

My first computer was a Z80-based CP/M machine. It was a "portable"
("luggable") all-in-one with built-in 9" amber screen, two 5 1/4" floppy
drives, keyboard, modem etc. I decided that I could afford to upgrade the
memory from 16K to 256K but a 5 MB hard disk was beyond what I could afford.
I think the price was about £1000, back in 1980. I remember driving about 40
miles into central London to collect it.

It was a good computer for its time and I used it for writing my university
final year report using Perfect Writer word processor and an Epson RX80 dot
matrix printer. I even managed to make an adaptor (analogue-to-digital
converter and buffer) which connected to the port for the external hard disk
(if I'd bought one) and I wrote some software to record and playback sound.
I also built an RGB-to-PAL converter so I could drive a TV - the graphics
card could do colour even if the screen could only display shades of orange.

The PC still worked until a couple of years ago when it finally gave up the
ghost and stopped booting off the floppy or displaying BIOS messages on
screen.

My first IBM PC was an 8080 PC with 3 1/2" floppy and 20 MB hard disk. I
bought that at a staff discount rate through work (my company made PCs) and
that cost me an arm and a leg. It was only useful for DOS: I tried to
install an early version of Windows but it was un-useably slow.

How things have progressed since then: it was unthinkable that one day I'd
be using something with a 3 GHz quad-core CPU, 6 GB of RAM and a total of
about 2.5 TB of hard disk.