Re: [NTLK] Formatting & Erasing Linear Flash Cards

On 8/4/08 3:20 AM, "Woody Smith" <woodysmith@comcast.net> wrote:
> http://www.synchrotech.com/support/w2k-linear-sram.html#Q002

Woody, I have a friend who owns a PC with a PCMCIA slot. However, when we
tried the generic Windows driver technique presented at the link above, we
weren't able to find the "PCMCIA and Flash memory devices" driver in the
list. I know he has WinXP on his PC, but we could only see "PCMCIA
adapters" in the list, which of course does not work to mount my 32MB Linear
PC card. I have another PC at work which has the "PCMCIA and Flash memory
devices" drive in the list along side the "PCMCIA adapters" driver, but I am
now Windows savvy so I don't know how to copy out this "PCMCIA and Flash
memory devices" driver and drop it into the PC that has the PCMCIA card
slot. Ideas?

Anyway, my friend phoned up his associate who also has a PC and PCMCIA slot.
This associate of my friend doesn't have the "PCMCIA and Flash memory
devices" driver installed either, but he has some special software that can
read out the entire card -- I think that software is from Synchrotech.
Anyway, we trotted over to that friend's house and we were able to not only
see the card with that special software, but also read out the 31.5MB
contents and write it to a "test.bin" file. After writing out that file to
the PC's disk, we then were able to erase the flash card just fine. Then
after a successful erase, we wrote the test.bin file back to the card -- no
errors at all.

I think all this proves that my 32MB linear card is still good. Indeed, if
my card is bad, then why didn't this PC software tell me so? Because after
writing the file to my linear card, it also ran a lengthy verify and claimed
no write errors at all. But when I tried the card in my Newton 2100 in its
"refreshed" condition (i.e., after I wrote out the contents, erased the
card, then wrote back the contents), I got the same Newton "There is a
problem with this card" error.

Okay fine, we then put the card back in the PC and erased it again, this
time leaving it in the erased condition. I put the card in my Newton
thinking that should have solved the problem, but my Newton still coughs up
the same error. Infuriating!

I have two other cards (an 8MB and 4MB) which I put into both slots of my
Newton. Both cards are recognized and I can read/write to them fine. This
proves that my Newton is working fine. But yet, I was able to erase, read
and write to my 32MB linear card on this PC. That proves the 32MB card is
fine (in my mind anyway). I therefore fail to see how the Newton can
complain about a card the PC isn't complaining about!

Any further help at this point would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

James Wages

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Received on Mon Aug 4 20:40:57 2008