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dkightley
Posts: 2405
Joined: Tue Mar 10, 2015 4:09 pm

I hate SD cards!!!!!!!

The title is an under statement!!

Ever since I've been on Windows 10, I've had to use a SD card to transfer code to my Makerbot R2, however the Makerbot SD socket will not read SD cards above 2GB due to the changed addressing needs of larger cards. I had the card supplied with the printer...and a 2GB MicroSD card fited into an adapter, and I could use them in turn to write to and print.

All was fine until the Micro card started getting data errors...so I was down to one SD card I could use. I do have a 2GB card in a camera I could use as an emergency spare! Then I bought my second R2...so now I had two SD cards that would work with two printers. Not a reliable situation....so I scoured EBay, etc to look for 2GB cards...which are starting to slowly disappear as larger capacity cards get cheaper.

I bought three 2GB SD cards....non-descript or non-branded...and when they arrived, I could write to them...but not read them in my Bots!! I checked the formatting (non-FAT, etc), downloaded a SD formatter package from one of the manufacturers and tried reformatting. Two reformatted, the other went totally corrupt....and neither of the two that reformatted could be read by my Bots....and neither by my camera!

In desperation, I bought three used second-hand Micro SDs in adapters and tried them. Two work perfectly...but the third has the same symptoms as the previous three cards I'd tried. At least I have a spare card to write to whilst by Bots are both printing.....but I'm really looking forward to Microsoft getting the USB stuttering issue resolved so I can get at least one of my printers connected up directly.

So it looks as if the 2GB limit is not quite that simple for compatibility with older SD device sockets. There must be 2GB cards that have connection incompatibilities with older devices....perhaps they're the "high speed" technology that 4GB and bigger cards are now advertised as having. I just wonder if the newer 2GB cards are bigger cards that fail to make the grade....and have a board connection cut or made to restrict their capacity to 2GB.
Doug Kightley
Volunteer at the National Tramway Museum http://www.tramway.co.uk
Railway modeller and webmaster at http://www.talkingtgauge.net
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jimc
Posts: 1124
Joined: Wed Aug 28, 2013 11:02 pm
Location: mullica, nj
Contact: Website

Re: I hate SD cards!!!!!!!

doug, why dont you get yourself a raspberry pi and run octopi on it. it is a very cool setup. your printer would then have a dedicated computer to run it.
billyd
Posts: 272
Joined: Mon Jan 19, 2015 12:13 pm

Re: I hate SD cards!!!!!!!

There may be aftermarket SD card readers that can be installed in the Makerbot. Not sure. Something to check though.
danielhenley
Posts: 37
Joined: Fri Sep 11, 2015 1:27 pm

Re: I hate SD cards!!!!!!!

dkightley wrote: I bought three 2GB SD cards....non-descript or non-branded...
BAD idea, the market is flooded with junk SD cards. Heck I don't even trust branded names unless they come from a reputable dealer as counterfeits are more common than the real thing.

Always buy a major brand from a major dealer and you'll not have nearly as many problems.
JMP
Posts: 19
Joined: Tue May 14, 2013 9:34 pm

Re: I hate SD cards!!!!!!!

The card size limitation if firmware related, not hardware. Updating the firmware to Sailfish should solve your problem

http://jettyfirmware.yolasite.com/features.php#sd
dennisjm
Posts: 343
Joined: Wed May 07, 2014 9:51 pm

Re: I hate SD cards!!!!!!!

JMP wrote:The card size limitation if firmware related, not hardware. Updating the firmware to Sailfish should solve your problem

http://jettyfirmware.yolasite.com/features.php#sd
+1. I'm using Sailfish on my Flashforge and couldn't be more happy with the upgraded firmware. There are lots of other things besides just the card reader that work a lot better.

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