SDHC & micro-SDHC card readers for Windows 98

[jaclaz]

Well, pretty sweet that CNMemory published a working driver...but not on their website

maybe they did

....on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'.

http://www.planetclaire.org/hitchhikers/

jaclaz

[Multibooter]

The reader works perfect and is very fast (my reader from my HP printer is slow as hell)

Hi Qui-Gon,

The RTS5158 chip inside the CnMemory card reader is listed among the current Top Performers by HJ Reggel http://www.hjreggel.net/cardspeed/info-readers.html so no wonder it's fast. Does the Realtek driver have a safely-remove-icon in the system tray? Is the icon of the card reader in My Computer a 2-state-icon (card inserted/not inserted)?

P.S. I have added Hard Disk Drive Low Level Format Tool v2.36 to the Tool Box on the first page. Wiping data from an SDHC card may be much easier than from a HDD, unless there are backdoors built into the chip by the manufacturers/designers of the controller on the SDHC cards.

Edited December 2, 2008 by Multibooter

[Qui-Gon]

The reader works perfect and is very fast (my reader from my HP printer is slow as hell)

Hi Qui-Gon,

The RTS5158 chip inside the CnMemory card reader is listed among the current Top Performers by HJ Reggel http://www.hjreggel.net/cardspeed/info-readers.html so no wonder it's fast. Does the Realtek driver have a safely-remove-icon in the system tray? Is the icon of the card reader in My Computer a 2-state-icon (card inserted/not inserted)?

There is no safely-remove-icon in the system tray but a 2-state-icon in My Computer. The icon shows a "Multi Card" symbol when there is NO card in the slot and if you insert a card it changes to the one thats in the Slot (CF-Symbol (thats blue with white CF letters) and others).

I always removed the card when the "light" stopped blinking, no problem with the files on the Card and no problem with windows when i removed the cardreader/card from USB.

I bought a second PopArt Cardreader today, perhaps it can be useful in future (but 5 years warranty arent bad too )

Just found a USB data cable yesterday so i could connect the reader via cable...works perfect

I totaly can recommend this Cardreader to all Win98SE users (and XP/Vista and the others too)

I payed 7 Euro for one reader...pretty cheap

Edited December 2, 2008 by Qui-Gon

[SeeAScot]

Benchmarking partitioning/formatting software for SD/SDHC cards

I initially made a full format of a Kingston 4GB, class 4 micro-SDHC card with the Panasonic Formatter 2.0. For each test I copied under WinXP 200 .jpg files, altogether 122 MB, from a FAT32 partition of an internal IDE 80GB 2.5" HDD to this micro-SDHC card, always newly formatted with the software in question.

Here the amazing results of the time it took to copy these files:

- if fully formatted under WinXP with Panasonic Formatter 2.0.0.3: (FAT32, only cluster size possible: 32kb): 30 seconds = 4.06 MB/sec

- if formatted under Win98 with Acronis Disk Director 10 as FAT32: 123 seconds = 0.99 MB/sec

- if formatted under WinXP with Windows-Format as FAT32: 103 seconds = 1.18 MB/sec

- if formatted under WinXP with HP Formatter (FAT32, 4kb clusters): 100 seconds = 1.22 MB/sec

- if quick formatted under WinXP with Panasonic Formatter 2.0.0.3: 30 seconds = 4.06 MB/sec, same copying speed as full format

The tests were done under WinXP, on a 700MHz laptop, 512MB RAM, Praktica card reader via a USB 2.0 PCCard. Files were copied to the micro-SDHC card from a FAT32 partition of an 80GB 2.5" HDD.

I have an Ultra All-in-one multi card reader which comes up as 4 drives. It has drivers for 98SE, but I am busily upgrading my 98SE installation and have downloaded, but not tried them yet.

Using a standard size Dane Electric SDHC card with XP I got 14.3 MB/sec and 16 MBsec burst using HTTach 2,7

I also have an IOGear Pocket Drive SDHC adapter (lets you use an SD card as a thumb drive), which comes with NO 9x drivers.

Using the same SDHC card with XP, and without reformatting, I got 17.6 MB/sec and 20.1 MB/sec burst

(IIRC the 4Gb SDHC card was originally formatted in the IOGear Pocket Drive)

We un's too lazy to erase the 4 GB of files currently on the 4Gb card just for a speed test - 'sides, it's one of the backups of my D:\ drive.

This is on an Athlon 64X2 4400 with 4Gb ram and 15K RPM SCSI drives which normally give me around 100MB/sec. I have no IDE drives in this machine.

The easiest way to format a under 2Gb standard SD flash drive to FAT16 is to use a camera. One reason so many cameras can't use over 2 Gb Flash cards as most of the cameras which can't take SDHC cards can't read Fat32. There are some exceptions, and if you can find 4Gb non-HC compliant SD cards, they will work in some cameras (and notebooks) which can't take SDHC cards, however, as the 4Gb non-HC compliant cards were only produced from the time the manufactures started churning out 4Gb SD cards to the time the SDHC specification was introduced, they are fast disappearing from the supply chain.

As I am going to be using 98SE (dual boot with XP) on an older IBM Thinkpad which only has USB 1.1, it is unlikely I will be doing much card reading with the Thinkpad, (even a PCMCIA USB 2.0 adapter is limited to the 48MB/sec speed of the PCMCIA card) although I will install the NUSB drivers so I CAN!

[Drugwash]

I got a takeMS 64-in-1 USB 2.0 multi card reader/writer and it works fine with NUSB 3.3.

Doesn't come with any drivers at all.

Shows up as 5 removable drives and it's a PITA to remove all of them one by one through NUSB.

No benchmarking figures since I got a VIA VT6202 PCI-to-USB 2.0 card that was never that good with transfers.

[Multibooter]

I got a takeMS 64-in-1 USB 2.0 multi card reader/writer and it works fine with NUSB 3.3.

Doesn't come with any drivers at all.

Shows up as 5 removable drives and it's a PITA to remove all of them one by one through NUSB.

The safely-remove-utility of nusb3.3 has a problem with multi-card readers: having to safely-remove 5 drives, one after the other, takes nearly as much time as a simple reboot. The manufacturer-provided driver by Genesys, for example, does this with a single removal selection from the system tray: "Stop Genesys USB Mass Storage Device J,K,L,M".

Another issue of nusb3.3 with card readers with several drive letters is that nusb3.3 does not indicate in My Computer which drive-letter actually contains the inserted card. The manufacturer-provided driver by Genesys, on the other hand, has 2-state-icons in My Computer, red when the card is inserted, grey when no card is inserted; this also identifies in red which of the several drive-letters of the multi-card reader I should double-click to open. Also, the 4 drive icons of the multi-card reader in My Computer are marked CF, SM, SD and MS, according to card type.

The discussion nusb vs. manufacturer-provided drivers is comparable to the discussion of printer etc drivers 10 years ago (compare p.812 in Minasi's Expert Guide to Windows 98, "Printer Drivers: Use the Manufacturer's or the Ones in Windows 98?")

In general I don't like multi-card readers which assign a separate drive-letter to each slot, it's a waste and clutters My Computer. If you use the card reader constantly, maybe you might consider a single-card reader just for the specific card type you use.

I do use one multi-card reader as a special-purpose device. I have a hama/EasyLine 55745 multi-card reader with a built-in hub, which I have been using as a dedicated eMule download station, without any problems, for 24-hours a day during the last 3 months. This eMule download station is similar to a solid-state drive (SSD), but with removable media (3 SDHC cards) so that I can remove the SDHC card containing the completed downloads, without the need to stop eMule. I have a 16GB SDHC card in a card-slot of the multi-card reader plus 2 single-slot SDHC card readers at the USB connectors of the built-in hub, altogether 48GB (3 SDHC cards) for eMule incoming+multiple temporary directories.

Typical eMule uptime with this dedicated SDHC download station has increased under Win98SE by about 1 day over an internal HDD, to 3 days 10 hours +-2hours. So physical read-write issues of HDDs definitely contribute to eMule crashes under Win98SE. I haven't figured out yet why my eMule v0.49b under Win98 on the download station with SDHC cards crashes regularly after about 3 days 10 hours.

Edited March 16, 2009 by Multibooter

[Drugwash]

I use that multi card reader extremely rarely. Actually, I only own a 1GB micro-SD that I keep in my (lately useless) Huawei mobile phone and I wanted a card reader for the case I'd have to give that phone back or would "die". But heck, why not a multi-reader? A friend might come over with a camera or other device that would need specific (and usually unavailable) 9x drivers - happened with a HP Photosmart camera, wasted half night to "see" it, to no avail.

As for eMule, I've had it run for 6 days in a row and it would've carried on if I didn't have to reboot due to low resources (darn 9x limitation that's being rediscussed around lately). It's taking a break now - got neither free space nor needed files to grab.

The only time it would crash - and hopefully it's been fixed in 0.49c - is on close when there's downloads in progress, since I've kinda pushed the max number of connections and sources.

[Multibooter]

As for eMule, I've had it run for 6 days in a row

That's nice to hear, so there should be still some ways to increase the uptime of my mule, which is running on a 10-year-old USB 1.1 laptop and is connected via wireless LAN to the router. My router, with 3-5 computers connected, has itself an uptime of 30-60 days until it hangs. Edited March 17, 2009 by Multibooter

[dencorso]

This is just to tell you Chip Genius V 2.72 is now available, over at http://www.mydigit.cn/chipgenius.htm

To download it, just click on the leftmost link at the last line in the Chip Genius homepage. It is in chinese characters, of course: 点击下载 (where 点击 = click and 下载 = download).

[dencorso]

Creating bootable SDHC cards

Under Win98 you canNOT readily create a bootable SD card. When right-clicking on the SD drive - Format - Full - select Copying System files: the format will complete ok but the system files will NOT be copied, when formatting is complete, the selection "Copy system files" in the Format window will be greyed out.

*** WARNING: THIS IS NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART!!! ***

IT CAN MESS UP ONE'S PARTITIONS BEYOND BOOTABILITY, AND IT CAN CAUSE IRREPARABLE DATA LOSS, IF ONE REPARTITIONS OR FORMATS THE WRONG HDD BY MISTAKE.

Well, using NUSB 3.3 as the driver, and having the care to copy any file to the media with Windows Explorer before proceeding, to get it fully mapped (this is necessary!), you can then, on a Windows DOS Box, partition and format them as desired, using the The Ranish Partition Manager version 2.43 (beta) a.k.a. part243, just ignore the warning about not working under windows, and take care not to mess with any of your HDDs, which will *usually* be listed before the flash media. Then stop and remove the media. Dismiss the DOS box. Then reinsert and again copy any file to the media with Windows Explorer before proceeding, to get it fully mapped. Go back to RPM, in a new DOS box, and verify it's all right, but change nothing. If it doesn't seem right, stop and remove the media again. Dismiss the DOS box again. Then reinsert and again copy any file to the media with Windows Explorer before proceeding, to get it fully mapped. This time, in yet another new DOS box, RPM will show exactly what you had done, and you'll quit it without changing anything, once again. You may now delete the files you copied to the media just to have it mapped as a HDD. Now, in the same DOS Box, sys the media, and it should be bootable in DOS, all right. I usually also set the volume label with the label command, just after transferring the system to it. This is my preferred method for rendering bootable any kind of flash media (it works with SDHC cards and with pen-drives). Once you learn how to do it, it's quite fast to be done. But due care must be used to avoid problems.

Read carefully the above instructions and only proceed if you are 100% sure you know what you're doing. These instructions do work, but a single small mistake can and will cripple your system!!! If your system stops booting, you have only yourself to blame.

You have been warned!