Sdhc? Will The Gp2x Be Able To Support It?


Loubear

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I mean this either through the existing port (probably not possible, just wondering because I dont know) or through a usb reader?
 
Ah, I got these two:
School District of Hillsborough County :www.sdhc.k12.fl.us/
San Diego Housing Commission :www.sdhc.net/
I figured neither of these were what you meant, it looks like you meant SDHC, or more clearly: SD HC which at least suggests that we are dealing with SD cards and an acronym, need to capitolize it if it is an acronym you know.

Well, it doesn't look good as for support: http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/06/12/pa...sdhc_camcorder/
SDHC is not backwards compatible and can only be used in an SDHC host device. You can use regular SD media in an SDHC host device.

I don't know if a hack can be done, it would really be up to the actual hardware and the coding possibilities if indeed the two standards are at least physically and communication timing/voltage compatible.

Thanks for turning me on to this, I am off to scour the web, I will return (play Superman theme music as super-nerd flies into the information super"fly"way)
 
From what I've heard of SDHC, it's actually a new card format (yay... another one...) that just uses some of the current SD technology and expands from there (or "jumping on the marketing band-wagon", as it's commonly known).

To sum up, in my own cynical way, it's not going to function as an SD card. So we'd need to buy SDHC USB devices and go from there... nuts

Edit: Damn! nubie beat me to it ;)
 
It looks like a format that will flop:

The reason they are using SDHC is because FAT32 formatting does not conform with the SD specification, so they make SDHC (HC=high capacity). HOW ABOUT YOU JUST MAKE DEVICES THAT SUPPORT FAT32 RETARDS!!

Yeah!! What are these 4GB fat 32 SD cards we are buying? Oh, of course they don't exist.

I scoured the web, no info, maybe wikipedia is full of half-useful gossip at this stage in the standard.

Edit: it turns up some interesting info http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Digital
Capacity limit in all SD/MMC formats appears to be 128 GB in LBA mode (28-bit sector address).
Why do they need SDHC if the current 28-bit mode goes to 128GB?? I am sure that is going to be enough for a few years, but this next bit may offer an explanation.
It seems that maybe people can't be bothered to write drivers for everything that used SD cards, so just come up with a new standard, brilliant.
Until 2006 the compatibility with SD Cards of 2GB or more was very poor. Most commercial card readers (including those from SanDisk, Kingstone,... and those built in devices), PDAs and cameras fails to work with such big cards for many different reasons. In 2006 card readers starting to support those cards as they are more common. This caused anger to many customers who was purchasing the cameras and media players and expecting them to work with big SD Cards as well as when searching for card reader able to read data back to computer.

I really hope that this means the standard will flop, or at least that it is similar enough that the GP2X will read it, it kind of makes sense, something needed to be done about the SD compatibility, and promising that upgraded firmware will fix it would be a bad move that could anger people if it doesn't happen for many devices.

Just seems like a way to force-educate people about large SD cards, and make money off a new standard, I hope it is dumped in favor of 8GB and larger SD that are compatible, it seems to be the devices fault and not the cards.

On a side note it appears that many were too harsh on the GP2X regarding the 2GB and 4GB SD cards, many devices have trouble with them, we are lucky the Firmware 2.0 came out, imagine a $500 Camera with no firmware update to 2GB and 4GB SD, that would really tick me off.
 
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Here's another somewhat informative web page about SDHC: http://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-sdhc-cards.htm

I'm afraid I still don't understand what the big deal is though. All the articles I've seen seem to say that SD tops out at 2GB... but aren't there alread 4GB SD cards on the market, or are these actually SDHC's? If I'm not mistaken, I've heard that at least one or two brands of 4GB cards do in fact work on the GP2X... Also, some articles seem to imply that normal SD cards can only handle FAT12 and FAT16 formatting, but that is obviously not the case...

As far as I can tell, SDHC seems to just be an extension of the SD specification that will include technologies that are already being used (mainly FAT32)... considering many devices wouldn't understand FAT32, it seems logical to have some sort of branding to prevent confusing... Is there any electrical difference at all?

--Zero
 
Read. Engadget!
Not concrete facts, news and hearsay. No facts until we have one and somebody pays for the license to develop drivers for it.


Here's another somewhat informative web page about SDHC: http://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-sdhc-cards.htm

I'm afraid I still don't understand what the big deal is though. All the articles I've seen seem to say that SD tops out at 2GB... but aren't there alread 4GB SD cards on the market, or are these actually SDHC's? If I'm not mistaken, I've heard that at least one or two brands of 4GB cards do in fact work on the GP2X... Also, some articles seem to imply that normal SD cards can only handle FAT12 and FAT16 formatting, but that is obviously not the case...

As far as I can tell, SDHC seems to just be an extension of the SD specification that will include technologies that are already being used (mainly FAT32)... considering many devices wouldn't understand FAT32, it seems logical to have some sort of branding to prevent confusing... Is there any electrical difference at all?

--Zero

See above, I edited and included a discussion on this very fact.


No, these cards START at 4gbs. That's the minimum.

See my post above. Note that 28-bit addressing is 128GB compatible, it seems this is just the easiest way to make stupid consumers able to use bigger cards.
 
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Well I've got a SD HC card winging it's way to me as we speak, as I only looked at it reading FAT32 and bought on impulse. Has anyone actually confirmed whether it works with the GP2X?
 
Well I've got a SD HC card winging it's way to me as we speak, as I only looked at it reading FAT32 and bought on impulse. Has anyone actually confirmed whether it works with the GP2X?

Nope... from wikipedia:

"The SD 2.0 standard in SDHC uses a different memory addressing method (sector addressing vs byte addressing[5]), causing devices that do not specifically support SD 2.0 / SDHC to fail to recognize the memory cards."

It does sound like a simple software upgrade would allow support though as they appear to be physically compatible.
 
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Maybe it'll be similar to using a high capacity hard drive on an old computer... I actually had a 160GB drive working fine in a 386, even though the BIOS only supports 512MB. It was just an addressing change that could still use old style IDE controllers, but the BIOS and such aren't set up to handle it. Just make sure linux can get loaded from the first 512MB and it's smooth sailing from there.

In this case though, it would require driver changes, which might be hard to get specifications for since the SD association consists of a bunch of tightasses who want money and signatures for anything more useful than marketing info. It's also possible that the MMSP2 SD interface has hardware acceleration for the normal SD access method, and using SD HC on it might be painfully slow, or even impossible if low level access isn't available. I'd say the outlook is uncertain until more is known.
 
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