Gp32 Not Recognising Smc Card But Cards Seem Ok

[skysnapper]

Have 2x 128 meg smart media cards that used to work in gp32.
I can format and copy files back and forth via my smartmedia reader usingf windows and the cards seen.

As soon as i put the cards into my gp32 it won't recognise them as being there.
My other card works fine!
Funnily enough my mp3 player can't read them either but windows can no problem.

Have tried using the recovery thing on aquafish's bios but it doesn't do it.
The filesystem is FAT.
Have tried formatting via the gp32 using the link cable..

is there any else i can try

 

[rcx21000]

Is the metal part clean?

 

[thingley]

Probably partition information is corrupt.

Try running fdisk and seeing if your card shows up as a 124Mb hard disk (Some card readers do, some don't - just go to run on the windows start menu and type fdisk)

If it does show up you can create a primary dos partition (delete the old one if necessary) that takes up all the space on the card and then use windows to format it - it might work okay then.

Y'see Windows doesn't need good partition information - as long as the FAT is there it will cheerfully ignore it - other devices are more fussy especially if they have to boot from the card

finally (and this really is a last ditch effort) you could try using a hex editor to :

1- Read ALL the hex off one working SM card and save it to a file

2- Then write this back to one of your corrupt cards

There are a few programs out there that will do this like Acronis Disk editor and Axe but they are not the most user-friendly programs around.

 

[skysnapper]

thx will try those options.. was wondering if there were any fdisk or similar low level formatting utilities for smc cards.

Had a feeling the partion may be corrupted but no idea how to fix it.

 

[claus]

Did you format the card using your smc-reader or did you place your card in the gp and then formated with pc-link?

Forget this I missed the last part of your post