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4 GB Cards in the M8 - Leica response


johnastovall

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I contacted Christian Erhardt at Leica U.S. about SanDisk Extreme III SD cards (the Extreme III CF are the type of only cards I use in my Canon dSLRs) in the M8. He passed my request to Dave Elwell of Leica U.S. Parts/Technical information. Here is the reply I have recived.

 

"John

The M8 will handle cards up to 4GB. If 4GB cards are used, they should be the HC type. You would have to contact Sandisk about the differences between their cards, but I think it all has to do with how fast the card writes.

 

Dave Elwell"

 

So it looks like any HC type card up to 4 GB will work.

 

I have to say Leica it's things like this which makes me happy to go back using Leica.

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Yes, I think usually, to get a quick and straight answer one should contact Leica directly.

 

However, I am a little frustrated by the lack of clear information given on memory cards for the M8. Basically, if the M8 supports SDHC cards, then it should support cards beyond 4GB, as the SD v.2.0 spec allows, if the M8 truly conforms to this industry standard.

 

The most likely possibility why only 4GB SDHC cards are being mention is because recently announce 8GB SDHC cards have yet to hit the shelves.

 

What's notable about the Extreme III cards is that they fall out of any industry standard, being somewhat of a hybrid between SD v.1.0 and 1.1.

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Well...I just sent my 4 gig Sandisk SDHC card back....for some reason, the reader enclosed with the card crashes my Mac every time (locks it up, can't be ejected, won't read), when used with a 2 gig non-SDHC card or with the 4 gig SDHC card...and I can't find another reader to buy for SDHC! It worked once, with the 2 gig card, but was *verrrrry* slow (half the speed of my other SD card reader), so I will wait until I can find a better reader anyway...

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the following is perhaps related, from a discussion of Sony (laptop) products & 4GB SD cards. this was over at leog.net

 

Ultra-Portables Forum - Fix for VAIO builtin card reader and 4GB SD cards

 

you probably have to log in to see the original.

 

not totally understanding this, i think it says that the 4GB SD cards are going to be different than >4GB SD cards & it seems to imply that cards OVER 4GB won't be able to be read.

 

(my asterisks ***added)

 

Robert

 

 

 

 

Sony uses the TI PCI7411 flash media controller to power the SD/MemoryStick reader.

This reader doesn't recognize 4GB SD secure digital cards out of the box and it is

very annoying if you have one of these cards.

 

I'm convinced with the proper FlashMedia controller driver, the SD port can be made

to understand 4GB cards. I have no problems with the 4GB SD card (Transcend 150x 4GB)

in my other readers even very old ones like Sandisk SDDR-88 USB external reader,

Soyo BayOne Genesys Logic GL817E based desktop card reader, and Dell E1705 Ricoh-based

card reader, as well as Canon SD300 digital elph camera, and iPAQ 2210 PocketPC PDA.

 

********Before someone mentions SDHC (SD2.0), really it isn't necessary to have SDHC to support

4GB, but it does standardize 4GB support by introducing FAT32 filesystem support officially

into the SD spec. In effect the SDHC cards now cost 3x as much as the current SD cards,

which have non-standardized 4GB support, but SD2.0 has new packaging and the "SDHC" logo.

While it is nice to have 4-32GB standardized, the increased price (for the same material) is

not nice and it doesn't help the Vaio either because the chances we will get a SDHC upgrade

are slim to none.

 

Anyway I noticed people with other integrated laptop media controllers based on TI chipset

having success getting 4GB SD secure digital cards to read with newer drivers and registry

entries. These drivers are all related and the hardware design is based on reference platforms

so this leads me to believe the Vaio's media controller can be made to understand 4GB cards.

The PCIxx21 chipset is the same as PCI7411 but it has 2 PCMCIA controllers vs 1.

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Robert,

 

To clarify, 4GB SDHC cards are not simply nicely labeled 4GB Secure Digital cards. They are not the same material.

 

One main difference is the fact that SDHC cards use sector addressing as opposed to the traditional byte addressing of previous SD cards.

 

Furthermore, I have seen very good pricing on SDHC cards that is comparable to quality SD cards.

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