Experimental Sdhc Support For Gp2x

[Nurg]

Mine doesn't work with a dane-elec 4gb card either. It does work with my transcend 4gb, which I'm chuffed about, so thanks for that.

It would be handy to have these dane-elec 4gbs working as they are very cheap. On the other hand maybe you get what you pay for....

 

[DJWillis]

In the case of the Open2x SDHC support (that uses a chunk of Notaz's patch now) it seems to be only some of the Dane-Elec cards that fail.

I now have several 4GB cards and the results from 3 Dane-Elec cards that look identical are wildly different. It looks like Dane-Elec much like Kingston, Viking and the other smaller brands just package up whatever memory and connection IC they can get there hands on cheaply that week .

That said I will try and add support for any SDHC cards I have that currently don't work so I guess that may well cover off a lot of the Dane-Elec and other 'unknown' brands.

As I have said elsewhere the 8GB card I have works with the current Open2x code I am hacking with.

There is a page about the Open2x SDHC support in the Open2x WiKi here.

 

[DJWillis]

Can anybody who has Dane-Elec cards please let me know what tools they are using to put a file system on the cards and if they are working fine for other uses.

The main reason I ask is we have been buying the 4GB cards on an off for a while at work and the 3 recent batches have had an astronomical fail rate (50%+ ) and I am wondering if people having problems using them on the GP2X actually have duff cards or not.

John

 

[Blah]

How can you afford all those cards?

 

[DJWillis]

How can you afford all those cards?

Did you not read the "at work" bit .

A few dozen cards is small fry you are using them in big projects (and somebody else is paying for them ).
I have just been testing them on the sly in GP2X's and was also alarmed by the fail rate.

By the way, 50%+ is over 15 cards from 2 dif. suppliers. All Dane-Elec .

These failures seem to be cards that will not even read in proper (SDHC aware) card readers (device shown as locked, bad etc. or PC will hang) and do not even fire off the detection events to guess the card type when put in a GP2X.

 

[flydpnkrtn]

Hmm I have a 4 gig SD and an 8 gig and they're sort of half working... lol

I can get into fdisk on them and create filesystems, and can mkfs.msdos on them. Can't get much further than that though (can't get to them over SMB or anything of that nature)

I will continue testing it though...

Edit: Also I'm now eagerly watching the Open2X devel mailing list for a binary Open2X 2.4.26 kernel

Are you guys gonna add the newer module for Linux networking? That was giving me headaches for weeks until I found the page http://wiki.gp2x.org/wiki/UsbNet_on_Linux#Troubleshooting ... it'd be a good idea to roll that into Open2X 2.4.26

 

[Nurg]

Can anybody who has Dane-Elec cards please let me know what tools they are using to put a file system on the cards and if they are working fine for other uses.

My dane-elec 4gb seems to work ok in a transcend SD card reader, but doesn't work in either my TomTom or my GP2X. I'm formatting in WindowsXP and dumping lots of files onto it. I got a few odd Windows errors at one point, but I moved 4gbs of files to another computer via that card and reader and it seems fine so I think that was just Windows being Windows.

My transcend 4gb works in GP2X with the firmware from this thread but doesn't work in my TomTom, while my ridata 4gb works fine in both GP2X and TomTom without mods.

I would be more than happy to supply any info I can about the dane-elec I have. Let me know what I need to do.

 

[jedisolo]

I bought a 8 gig SDHC A-data card from newegg and the gp2x does recognize the card because I copied a video file onto the card. I haven't tried the experimental sdhc support yet.

 

[netsurf]

the SDHC firmware works for me.. allowing me to use the play.com 4GB SDHC card. however it does not work in usb mode to copy files to and from a pc which makes the card entirely useless unless i wish to copy to nand then to sd since i have no sdHC compatible cardreaders

 

[jedisolo]

I flashed my gp2x with SDHC support and my 8 gig A-data card works. If you need to get a SDHC card reader here is one that I bought http://cgi.ebay.com/USB-2-0-SD-SDHC-CARD-M...6QQcmdZViewItem

 

[virusx]

Just a question about all that SDHC stuff: Does the "class" of the SDHC card matters?

 

[Squidge]

The class is how fast the card will go. 6 is the fastest AFAIK, 2 is the slowest.

 

[virusx]

Yep... But does it change anything for a 2X use ?

 

[Squidge]

Well, I'm just guessing here, but I would say that maybe a class 6 card would be read faster than a class 2 card on the gp2x, since the class is the speed...

Or, being less sarcastic Some emulators do benefit from faster cards - specially when they are spooling data off the card in mid-game.

 

[virusx]

Sarcastic you! :lol:
Thank you Squidge for the explanation.
I was wondering if the Gp2X (hardware and software) would benefit of this speed increase.

 

[DJWillis]

Sarcastic you! :lol:
Thank you Squidge for the explanation.
I was wondering if the Gp2X (hardware and software) would benefit of this speed increase.

In the case of the Open2x SDHC support it seems to make very little difference (after some quick tests).
The speed of the GP2X's controller is hardly its strong point and the DMA issues further hamper things.

That said, SDHC cards of the better classes still cost a bomb and nobody working on SDHC support has any to really test with .

Feel free to test and report back here on the WiKi. All this is there currently is the SDHC cards I own and even then not all of them. If your feeling really generous you can always donate high-speed cards for testing.

 

[Squidge]

I can get 10mbytes/sec out of a class 4 SDHC card. Although that's not on the gp2x, and it completely ignores all the data returned

But I have noticed its possible to get over 5mbytes/sec even on the gp2x without dma support. I've no idea what speeds people get at the moment. Maybe someone can benchmark certain cards.

 

[virusx]

I will try to ask for a cheap (but branded) SDHC card from a special place, then I 'll try with the patch and let you know the results.

 

[chunkster]

The patch has been working flawlessly for me for a week or so. Thanks--the GP2X community RULES!

I'm using a Sandisk 4 GB Class 2 SDHC card. I've only tested it as my replacement mp3 player (Rio Karma RIP). It's been great running CraigAmp and having the same storage as a store-bought player that would be $200.

 

[sething]

would this SDHC support work with firmware 3? im just about to buy an 8 gig card if it works for 3.
any info would be appreciated
-Seth