4GB+ SD Cards - list of working cards?
 

Some N800 users have indicated that 4GB SD cards are working with OS 2007.

It might be useful to build a list of working cards by listing the following:

N800 OS 2007 Version
Card Manufacturer
Card Brand/Model
Capacity (4GB, 8GB etc.)
SD or SDHC
SDHC Class (if applicable - most likely Class 2 in most cases)
URL Link to online retailer if possible.

This might help future N800 owners with their SD card purchases! :)

Re: 4GB+ SD Cards - list of working cards?
 

I'm looking for some info on this, for the N800 I'm getting on Wednesday. Can I use a 8GB card?

Bounce.

Re: 4GB+ SD Cards - list of working cards?
 

4Gb Transcend @ $49...
http://www.buy.com/retail/product.as...70#prodInfoSec

Re: 4GB+ SD Cards - list of working cards?
 

From Wikipedia:
The card from buy.com above would appear to be a 4GB SD card. So I'm guessing the N800 does not support SDHC and that 4GB will be our limit.

Re: 4GB+ SD Cards - list of working cards?
 

No, you can't be sure. The Treo 680 works with both (4GB non-standard as well as SDHC) afaik, even though only 2GB old-standard SD cards are mentioned by Palm. If my memory serves - it's all to be found on the brighthand forum.

Re: 4GB+ SD Cards - list of working cards?
 

SDHC will most likely not work with stock N800 kernel but can be added in future. There are already such patches in latest versions of linux kernel so I guess it would be possible to backport it to N800 kernel.

http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linu...2280315542&w=2

Re: 4GB+ SD Cards - list of working cards?
 

I'd really like to know whether 8GB cards work in the N800. It's just about the only thing that might convince me to buy one: Having 16GB of storage readily available.

Re: 4GB+ SD Cards - list of working cards?
 

99% it does not work now
99% it can be easily added
If nobody else does it sooner, I will add it once/if I get N800.

Re: 4GB+ SD Cards - list of working cards?
 

Might also be a good idea to list those 4GB+ cards that do NOT work, and later on we can create a new thread that summaries the details of all working/non-working cards.

Anyone tried an SDHC card yet?

Re: 4GB+ SD Cards - list of working cards?
 

I have a 4GB PQI Hi-Speed 150 that I purchased from Fry's.

OS - Version - 1.2006.47-20

It works great.

I believe it is an SD card as I purchased it probably 6 months to a year ago

BTW - Love the N800 and it's TWO SD card Slots - I can transfer digital pics and movies from my camera MUCH more quickly that I could on my old PocketPC device.

j

Re: 4GB+ SD Cards - list of working cards?
 

I just tried all my 4GB cards and all worked:

Transcend 150x
Ridata 150x
PQI 150x

Re: 4GB+ SD Cards - list of working cards?
 

is it best to go for SD or MMC?

any tips for UK place to buy online?

Re: 4GB+ SD Cards - list of working cards?
 

I'd go with SD for the larger capacities and lower prices, but stear clear of SDHC / SD 2.0 cards - chatting on #maemo the opinion is definately that SDHC / SD 2.0 cards won't work as there is no kernel support.

Online in the UK you can try the following (I'm not recommending these firms btw, as I've only ever used Expansys myself in the past)

Moby Memory
My Memory
Expansys

Re: 4GB+ SD Cards - list of working cards?
 

cheers - I've used moby before and it was very quicka nd seemed a good price - I'd thought MMC were meant to be the cheaper, will check out!

Re: 4GB+ SD Cards - list of working cards?
 

Yes, I can confirm that an 8 GB SDHC 2.0 card will not work. I borrowed an AData 8 GB and it is not recognized by my N800.

I'm currently using dual 4 GB Patriot Extreme SD cards:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820220146

Re: 4GB+ SD Cards - list of working cards?
 

Has anyone done comparative N800 testing on SD cards with different speed ratings? In other words, is the transfer rate bus bound or media bound? I'd personally spend more for faster cards *IF* they provide a real benefit, but not if the channel saturates before the card tops out.

Re: 4GB+ SD Cards - list of working cards?
 

any more info on this topic?

having done a little research into it there doesn't seem to be much difference between SD and MMC to me, is it just a case of getting the best price on a brace of 4gig-ers? MMC seems less expensive option...

Re: 4GB+ SD Cards - list of working cards?
 

I believe the pinout on the SD & MMC are very similar if not the same, but the MMC is a bit thinner, which make it harder to get as much storage as SD.

Re: 4GB+ SD Cards - list of working cards?
 

I don't think the thickness means much one way or the other, some SDs are as thin - I have one thin 512MB SD card and one thin 1GB SD card, amongst the other "normal" cards.
The biggest difference between MMC and SD is that MMC uses 1-bit transfers (i.e. it has 1 connector to transfer data) while SD has 4. But SD can also work in MMC (1-bit) mode (which has slower maximum transfer speed, obviously), and some SD controllers on some PDAs only uses 1-bit mode as well.
Now, MMC plus has extended to 8-bit mode, if I remember the article I read on wikipedia correctly.. certainly the one card I own is _stuffed_ with connector leads!

Re: 4GB+ SD Cards - list of working cards?
 

Don't know if it works with the N800, but buy.com currently has a Kingston 2GB SD card for $9.95 after rebate (from Kingston). Sku is 202743332

Re: 4GB+ SD Cards - list of working cards?
 

Does anyone know if N800 can use the 4-bit or 8-bit transfer mode? If it can't then there is no benefit of getting 4-bit or 8-bit card... My guess is that the data bus is only 1-bit.

Re: 4GB+ SD Cards - list of working cards?
 

It is very likely (99%) that 4-bit interface is there and is used for SD cards. I don't think 8 bit mode is there and all 13 MMCmobile pins are present in the connector. This is very new standard and the connector is more complex (2 rows) and it in not very useful right now as cards are not fast enough even to saturate the 4 bit bus. I'm also not sure even 4 bits are used for MMCmobile/plus cards as this is quite new feature in linux (similar to SDHC). I guess best is to use SD cards with stock n800 firmware right now.

Re: 4GB+ SD Cards - list of working cards?
 

I concur with fanoush, it's probably a 4-bit SD interface in there. The 1-bit interface is typically the I/F that's integrated into some of the XSCALE cpus. In my Tungsten T3 the CPU has this interface, but there's an extra SD interface chip too that is used instead, this one provides the 4-bit interface. IIRC the Dell Axim 30x (also an XSCALE device) uses the built-in 1-bit CPU interface, but don't take my word for it - I haven't looked at the Axim HW myself. I have looked at the T3, and it has a dedicated SD interface chip. If anyone of you are willing to look inside the Nokia you may find out things.. I'm not going to, hopefully my N800 arrives tomorrow (unless they sent it by truck for the last 2000km, which I suspect at this stage.. grr!) and I won't void the warranty :-)
I googled a bit and found this page: http://mmc.drzeus.cx/wiki/Controllers
The chip in the T3 is the W86L488 SD/SDIO Winbond chip.

You can buy MMC Plus cards many places now, and they promise to be twice as fast as SD, but I haven't seen many devices that support them (in Plus mode) yet. Some of the high-end cameras, possibly. My pocket camera handles it as just another SD, apparently.

Re: 4GB+ SD Cards - list of working cards?
 

Linux Kernel patches adding SDHC support were submitted fairly recently - hopefully they'll be incorporated into a N800 firmware release at some point in the future.

Re: 4GB+ SD Cards - list of working cards?
 

Has anyone tried the 150x 4Gb Transcend cards?

Edit: nevermind, I just noticed they work :)

Re: 4GB+ SD Cards - list of working cards?
 

Hmmm...

As apparently 8GB SDHC cards will not work, and after some soul-searching, I decided to hold out on buying a N800, at least until (and if?) a kernel with support for SDHC becomes available.

Besides, there are enough other things still wrong with the N800 to warrant cauteousness.

Re: 4GB+ SD Cards - list of working cards?
 

OK... In other words the N800 should have up to 4x faster file data transfer rate with SD than N770 with MMC cards? (MMC cards had only 1-bit interface?). This is good news since the speed, especially write speed, to the MMC card on N770 was ridiculously slow... I bought external USB reader/writer and it seem to be like 3-5x faster when writing data to MMC.

Has anyone tested how long it takes to save a big file into the N800 SD card to calculate actual write speed?

Re: 4GB+ SD Cards - list of working cards?
 

1-bit for MMC applies only to first generation of MMCs. 770 came with MMCmobile, which I think is latest generation and 4 or 8-bit. Thought I don't know whether or not 770 used those bits.

Re: 4GB+ SD Cards - list of working cards?
 

I only see 9 (standard SD).

Re: 4GB+ SD Cards - list of working cards?
 

Update - 4GB Transcend 150x does *not* work. I don't know why people post that they have it working when it does not. Try copy a 100+Mb file to the card and watch it fail. 90 bucks down the tubes.

Re: 4GB+ SD Cards - list of working cards?
 

I said I don't think all 13 pins are there and also stated reasons why it is unlikely.

Re: 4GB+ SD Cards - list of working cards?
 

Can be issue with USB mass storage implementation in N800 (remember they support only 2GB officially) or with specific format (FAT16/32, specific cluster size), try to reformat the card either in N800 or on PC. Or try the copy via ssh/scp.

Also check kernel log when the card is inserted via 'dmesg' in osso-xterm if 4G size is reported and also if there are any errors when the copy fails. It is very unlikely this is specific to card maker unless there are I/O errors reported in kernel log.

Re: 4GB+ SD Cards - list of working cards?
 

In theory it can be even 8x or 16x. N770 mmc slot was running at 12Mhz using 1 bit bus width with nokia kernel while SD cards run at 25Mhz (probably 24Mhz in N800). Also some newer SD cards can support twice as that (50Mhz) so I guess n800 can be made to run them at 48Mhz like with current mmc high speed hack for N770.

Re: 4GB+ SD Cards - list of working cards?
 

ok, before I spend out on 2x4GB SD cards on monday - what works what doesn't?!?

Re: 4GB+ SD Cards - list of working cards?
 

Sorry, I misread your earlier comment.

Re: 4GB+ SD Cards - list of working cards?
 

I also bought a pair of Transcend 4GB 150X SD (not SDHC) based on info here. Expecting arrival around Wednesday 1/17/07; will test and report back.

Re: 4GB+ SD Cards - list of working cards?
 

We should just assume that up to this post none of the confirmed cards are known to work.

If you have a card, 'working' is defined by the ability to create 128Mb swapfile on it, and copy a file of at least 100Mb to it.

Re: 4GB+ SD Cards - list of working cards?
 

Good points konfoo. It helps to have a standard for pass/fail.

Re: 4GB+ SD Cards - list of working cards?
 

I have ordered two different brand 4GB SD cards, one Kingston and one ELITE PRO brand (or call it "no name" brand... :rolleyes: ) from eBay. They better work... :confused:

I'll let you know once I receive them and my N800.

Re: 4GB+ SD Cards - list of working cards?
 

Hope those aren't coming from Hong Kong :(