256mb/512mb 3.3v Smartmedia

[lek]

I've read a bit of discussion here regarding using 256mb Smartmedia in the GP32 and it normally concludes that either there are no 256mb Smartmedia cards available at the moment/256mb ones run off 5v and thus won't work/etc

Recently I found 3 places that claim to sell 256mb Smartmedia cards. One of the places also (apparently) sell 3.3v 512mb Smartmedia and 2 of them claim that their 256mb cards are 3.3v. It could well be that they don't actually have any of these in stock (although they can be ordered!?). Maybe listed for 2004 stock?

I'm presuming that the firmware is limited to 128mb anyway at the moment and just a firmware modification is needed (hopefully not a hardware limitation of the GP32 also)?

Presuming that these are 3.3v 256mb (and 512mb ) cards I see no reason why they could not work, is it basically gonna be a case of new firmware = SMC storage goodness sometime soon? If they are available now (fingers crossed) maybe someone can hack around with the current firmware to add support?

 

[Enslaved]

That sounds cool. They should work because the GP32 is compatible with 3.3v and I never read anywhere that its max capacity is 128mb, only that its 3.3v.

 

[TandeM]

I thought the GP32 could only recognize the first 128MB? I guess a BIOS workaround would fix that, though.

 

[mr twit]

I don't see why it would be limited to 128mb, as I think I heard somewhere that Gamepark claimed they were going to release a 256mb SMC for GP32s...

 

[Robster]

I hate to be a merchant of doom, but I don't believe that 256MB or 512MB SMC will ever be available.

Samsung (the only manufacturer of SMC) is not interested in maintaining the format. I've put links to Samsung's documents about this in other threads on this subject, search for it if you are interested.

The firmware and applications for GP32 will not support more than 128MB. The reason is that the first thing software has to do when accessing a SMC is to read its device ID, as this tells the software how big the card is. There are device IDs defined for 1MB through to 128MB. As far as I know (and I've searched a lot for information on this) there have never been any device IDs defined for 256MB or larger SMC.

Now, I would be overjoyed to be proven wrong. lek, where are these 3 places that you mentioned?

 

[younos]

Wasup

Right now there 265mb 3.3v


256mb smc 3.3v



PEACE

YS

 

[younos]

or this 512mb 3.3v


512 MB 3.3v



crazy ( :

 

[Steve-O]

Samsung (the only manufacturer of SMC)

So Every SMC is made by Samsung but with different Brand names on??? So Even them Cheap ones are made by Samsung??

 

[Evil_Cartman]

Wasup

Right now there 265mb 3.3v


256mb smc 3.3v



PEACE

YS

:huh:

 

[Steve-O]

Wasup

Right now there 265mb 3.3v


256mb smc 3.3v



PEACE

YS

:huh:

maybe they didnt have a 256mb card available to take a picture of... hhmmmmm

 

[Evil_Cartman]

Wasup

Right now there 265mb 3.3v


256mb smc 3.3v



PEACE

YS

:huh:

maybe they didnt have a 256mb card available to take a picture of... hhmmmmm

<_<

 

[The Milk From The Cow]

There are 256 and 512 MB smartmediacard. But i dont know if its working with the gp32.

 

[Luckett X]

Could we really get a solid answer to if these cards would work please, soon, as a 512mb SMC would be HEAVEN, and VERY benficial for all GP32 users.

Hell, I'd like to know if these products are even real, as no actual photo is somewhat alarming for any potential customer.

I cannot see why the GP32 would limit the possible size of future SMC's!

I can only hope we get the answer soon, as with a 512mb card that allows for far more movie storage, mp3's and excellence.

 

[Carface]

Well Ive been to the memorex website and they only show 128mb smart media cards. There is 256 mb and 512 mb for other memory cards like compact flash and multimedia but not smart media unfortunatly.

 

[Vimacs]

the gp32 uses fat 16 that means
max clusters 65536
min/max cluster size 2KB/32KB
max file size 2gb
max partition size 2gb

 

[Talyz]

the gp32 uses fat 16

My manual says that GP32 uses FAT12, and thats why you can't use filenames over 8 characters...

 

[Max]

I also can't find information about the 256 / 512 MB cards of the official website. http://www.sandisk.com/retail_smartmedia_card.html

 

[lek]

The websites that I found 3.3v >128MB Smartmedia on were as follows:

Australia #1 (256mb):
http://www.users.bigpond.com/uwhizz/page8.html
$164 Au. Dollar = £69 GBP

Australia #2 (256mb/512mb):
http://www.baltronics.com.au/july_delkin_p..._price_list.htm
$199 Au. Dollar = £84 GBP for 256mb
$669 Au. Dollar = £283 GBP for 512mb

UK (was 256mb):
http://www.creativecomputing.net/acatalog/..._smart_150.html

Note: Yesterday there were 256mb (for ~£34 GBP) cards listed after the 128mb ones on the UK site. Today I recieved the following email regarding the above -

"Hi,

We have been expecting a delivery of these (256mb 3.3v SMC's) for inexcess of 2 weeks from our suppliers, but they have not arrived, they have since told us that they will be unable to supply them. Sorry, we will remove them from our site.

Regards,

Scott Jackson
Creative Computing"

---------------

The Delkin site doesn't actually list anything above 128mb though (like SanDisk's site).


Really makes me wonder if they are in production or not. Like Steve-O said, are Samsung really the only manufacturer of SMC's? Do SanDisk, etc, use Samsung components or something? I always presumed that they were made by each manufacturer individually.

 

[lek]

Also:

http://www.ibofox.de/Hardware/Speichermedi...SmartMediaCard/

If you scroll down you will see loads of 256mb and 512mb SMC's listed for a variety of manufacturers. Generic, Samsung, SanDisk, Olympus, Memorex.

ibofox.de is some sort of shopping portal site I think, linked to evendi.de (one of the previous posted links) somehow.

And:

http://www.vmsystems.co.uk/prices/irper.htm

Have 256mb SMC's listed but no price ("call").


Maybe we're on the brink of the cards being released?

 

[mr.spiv]

I hate to be a merchant of doom, but I don't believe that 256MB or 512MB SMC will ever be available.

Samsung (the only manufacturer of SMC) is not interested in maintaining the format. I've put links to Samsung's documents about this in other threads on this subject, search for it if you are interested.

The firmware and applications for GP32 will not support more than 128MB. The reason is that the first thing software has to do when accessing a SMC is to read its device ID, as this tells the software how big the card is. There are device IDs defined for 1MB through to 128MB. As far as I know (and I've searched a lot for information on this) there have never been any device IDs defined for 256MB or larger SMC.

Now, I would be overjoyed to be proven wrong. lek, where are these 3 places that you mentioned?

I'll second Rob's rant.. Current GP32 BIOS has very little to do with the SMC access. The SMC size detection code etc is located in SDK libs and those fail to detect anything bigger than 128M SMCs (based on those ID codes Rob mentioned). Unless there is something really gludged in those new SMCs I'm afraid those won't be much use for the current GP32 base. :unsure: I would love to be proved wrong.... <_<