[tlug] 2G SD Card Adventures on a Zaurus

[Alain Hoang <hoanga@example.com>]

Hello all,

	After talking with Edward at the last technical meeting about Zauruses
and whether a 2G SD card would work properly in a Zaurus I decided to
pick up a 2G SD Card to try out in my Zaurus 760 after dumping pdaXrom
on it (That's another post).   After asking a couple of shopkeepers
at Akihabara about 2G SD cards in Zauruses (Zaurii?)  I got a definitive
"I don't know."   As luck would have it, I wasn't carrying my Zaurus  
on me
at the time which was a big mistake since one of the shopkeepers was
nice enough to offer testing a 2G card right there on the spot if I  
had my
Zaurus.

	After a bit of looking around I ended up picking up one of the A-Data
2 Gig SDCards which was  a bit cheaper than some of the other brands.

	After plugging it in, the first thing I noticed was the Zaurus froze  
for
about 30 seconds or so.  After that I checked to see if the SD card was
mounted at all.  No so luck.  dmesg gave the following:

[SD]-R 0800 0800 ERROR!
pxa_sd_receive_chars:  wait full FIFO time out (cmd=18 block=1[32k])
sd_read_multiple(196610) : receive error
mmc read checked internalbuf: ERROR adr = 4096 (0x1000) , len = 2048  
(0x800)
[SD]-R 1000 0800 ERROR!
pxa_sd_receive_chars:  wait full FIFO time out (cmd=18 block=1[32k])
sd_read_multiple(196610) : receive error
mmc read checked internalbuf: ERROR adr = 6144 (0x1800) , len = 2048  
(0x800)
[SD]-R 1800 0800 ERROR!
unable to read partition table
jffs2: attempt to mount non-MTD device 3c:01

	I'm still not sure what the errors say exactly besides I should
expect the SD card to not function properly.  So I tried the following:
1. Tried to mount the SD card with various options.  No Go.
2. Tried to partition the SD card via fdisk.    fdisk couldn't find
      any partition information and gave up.
3.  Getting sort of desperate and tried putting a filesystem by
       mke2fs /dev/mmc/<mumble>.    That almost looked like it
       did something but I still couldn't access the SD card.
4.  Plug it into the SD card slot in my Dell 700m.  It had troubles
       recognizing the SD card.
5.  Plug the SD card into my digicam.  Came up just fine and now
       I have lots of space for taking pictures.
6.  Plug the SD card into a USB card reader then plug it into the
      Dell.  Came up just fine.

	Anyways, the conclusions I've reached are
1.  If you want to test compatibility with something you buy at Akiba
      and you can carry that thing.  Do so
2.  The SD card I have isn't broken.
3.  2G SD Cards (or at least the one I got) are not a happy camper
      on a Zaurus 760.  If any other Zaurus users want to test out their
      Zaurus on a 2G SD card at the next nomikai/TLUG Technical meeting
      I'll be happy to bring the SD card for testing purposes but I  
imagine
      any of the 7xx series is pretty much a no-go.


Alain