256mb MMC Fat 16 on Win XP Pro problem

[Paranoid]

So, my Cuttle Cart arrived today, and I decided to get a jump on the configuration and start loading it with ROMS... but of course, I've ran into a problem.

 

When I format it on any of my PCs using FAT-16, I get an error message at the end of the format. It is the old "invalid media or track 0 bad" error.

 

Better yet, it is unrecoverable. Fortunately, I have a SD format on my PocketPC, and that fixes it right up... but only formats to Fat32, of course.

 

So... has anybody else here experienced this? I've played around with the allocation size, and it will only even attempt the format if I put in the format size at 16k or larger, but then I get the corruption. I gave up at 32k... maybe I should try 64k just for the hell of it. I Googled posts and it seems like this is a fairly common thing on MMC and SD cards, and that a lot of places are assuming that it is the reader or the card itself that is bad. Somehow I'm not buying that...

 

So has anyone experienced this, and how did you get around it? I'd like to use the 256mb, rather than drop down to a smaller card.

[Paranoid]

Well, I answered my question for myself. It seems like it is the reader that causes the problems formatting a large volume MMC to Fat16.

 

I went ahead and downloaded Pocket Mechanic, a Pocket PC drive manager application that allows more robust format options. The MMC formated like a champ using this application and the reader sees it fine.

 

No wonder Schell's site has the omnious and dire disclaimer and others talk about the value in having a pre-configured MMC card. I can imagine for the average person without a lot of professional PC experience that this part alone would be a daunting task to overcome, and I still haven't loaded the Schell application on the MMC, or converted and transfered any ROM images.

 

Anyhow, just for the "knowledge base", if you are experiencing this, it isn't your MMC card, most likely. It seems to be a limitation with either the Win32 Fat16 format or with the reader itself.

 

Chad, if you read this, you might want to link to this message in case anybody else experiences this... I can provide a lot more detail on what I experienced it and how I fixed it too, if anybody is interested.

[Curt Vendel]

What you are experiencing are some of the detachments that MS is quietly taking in XP and beyond, Fat16 is becoming less and less supported, some PC's BIOS' and XP together wont accept/read 720K 3.5's anymore I've found, though if I reboot in Win98 it works, so such older legacy luxuries are becoming hurdles as Windows continues to shed more of its past capabilities to move into newer (and not necessarily better) ones :-/

 

 

Curt

 

 

Well, I answered my question for myself. It seems like it is the reader that causes the problems formatting a large volume MMC to Fat16.

 

I went ahead and downloaded Pocket Mechanic, a Pocket PC drive manager application that allows more robust format options. The MMC formated like a champ using this application and the reader sees it fine.

 

No wonder Schell's site has the omnious and dire disclaimer and others talk about the value in having a pre-configured MMC card. I can imagine for the average person without a lot of professional PC experience that this part alone would be a daunting task to overcome, and I still haven't loaded the Schell application on the MMC, or converted and transfered any ROM images.

 

Anyhow, just for the "knowledge base", if you are experiencing this, it isn't your MMC card, most likely. It seems to be a limitation with either the Win32 Fat16 format or with the reader itself. 

 

Chad, if you read this, you might want to link to this message in case anybody else experiences this... I can provide a lot more detail on what I experienced it and how I fixed it too, if anybody is interested.

1029259[/snapback]

[jaybird3rd]

What you are experiencing are some of the detachments that MS is quietly taking in XP and beyond, Fat16 is becoming less and less supported, some PC's BIOS' and XP together wont accept/read 720K 3.5's anymore I've found, though if I reboot in Win98 it works, so such older legacy luxuries are becoming hurdles as Windows continues to shed more of its past capabilities to move into newer (and not necessarily better) ones :-/

 

Curt

These are some of the reasons why it's a VERY good idea to keep some "old" PCs around running "old" operating systems. No matter how great WinXP is, there's no denying that there are certain things that older versions of Windows (particularly the Win9X series) and DOS are better-suited for. This will become even more important as time goes on because of the transition away from legacy support that you mention; anyone who keeps only the latest and greatest hardware/software and then tries to do anything unusual with it will eventually run into issues like these. Running old OSes inside of Virtual PC or VMWare isn't always a viable alternative, either.

[Paranoid]

Curt... I think you're probably right on the money. I think I've seen this in support for legacy hardware (older CDs seem to be a particular problem lately) and passthrough CFIS/SMB authentication. Everything that used to integrate seamlessly is now broken and hit and miss. I don't know if it is a neccessary evolutionary growing pain in the PC platform or just Microsoft making things unnecessarily complex... but my money is on the last one.

 

Odd thing I've noticed... some CD/BIOS combonations won't load "certain" copies of Microsoft XP OSes... you move the drive to a different machine, it will work... and if you go looking for support, they tend to know that you're not using not just a non-original disk, but a PARTICULAR non-original disk. To me, that is troubling in an Orwellian sense (and making Linux look so much more attractive, especially as with KDE, Samba, and Komba Linux does such a good job of emulating a Windows NT 4 environment).

 

None of my current XP systems suffer from that particular issue... but I did experience it and saw other people seeking solutions and running into that hurdle, on forums. I suppose in my case, it was effective at achieving Microsoft's goal... "How would you like to comply today?"

 

Although I wonder if they realized it would simply hasten me to move my less critical machines to Linux because I couldn't justify extra copies of XP Home or Professional for 12 machines on my home network.

 

I've been real upset with workgroup and domain integration between Win2k, XP Pro, and XP Home (let alone trying to get Linux to join up to these in a workgroup or domain). In general, it seems like the whole industry is seeming like it is taking steps backwards, not forwards, the last couple of years.

 

Odd that my PocketPC (WinCE) device would be able to format the card that XP wouldn't... but, I suppose it was a third party utility that probably implements a non-broken pre-XP Fat 16 API.

Edited March 7, 2006 by Paranoid

[Paranoid]

And you know, the more I thought about this... the WORST thing is... if I were a layperson, I would have probably thought that I had permenently damaged my far out of warranty MMC card. Even so, the thought did cross my mind, but I knew there were a couple tricks that I could try... but after the failed XP format, it was coming up Bad Sector 0 when I would try to reformat, even in fat 32. A typical joe would have been throwing this card in the trash and heading down to Fry's or CompUSA to look for a replacement.

[jaybird3rd]

Curt... I think you're probably right on the money. I think I've seen this in support for legacy hardware (older CDs seem to be a particular problem lately) and passthrough CFIS/SMB authentication. Everything that used to integrate seamlessly is now broken and hit and miss. I don't know if it is a neccessary evolutionary growing pain in the PC platform or just Microsoft making things unnecessarily complex... but my money is on the last one.

To some extent, these kinds of problems are inevitable from a software engineering point of view. Maintaining 100% legacy compatibility while constantly adding on new features would lead to unmanageable regression testing and code bloat problems. Sooner or later, something had to come out, and it only makes sense to remove features that aren't important anymore to the majority of ordinary users. That doesn't mean that nobody needs them anymore, though, and those that do have little choice but to stick with what works best for them. That's why I don't feel the pressure to upgrade whenever a new OS or hardware platform (like AMD64) comes out: the stuff I have now works for me, and I'd actually be giving up a lot by moving to something newer.

 

And you know, the more I thought about this... the WORST thing is... if I were a layperson, I would have probably thought that I had permenently damaged my far out of warranty MMC card. Even so, the thought did cross my mind, but I knew there were a couple tricks that I could try... but after the failed XP format, it was coming up Bad Sector 0 when I would try to reformat, even in fat 32. A typical joe would have been throwing this card in the trash and heading down to Fry's or CompUSA to look for a replacement.

This is one of the things I really don't like too much about the modern, off-the-shelf, "Designed for Windows XP" computer: it's very powerful and inexpensive, but the platform has evolved in such a way that it is only well-suited for very ordinary mainstream applications: word processors, spreadsheets, web browers, games, etc. If you want to customize your machine beyond changing wallpapers and screen savers, and if you want to do any kind of hardware hacking, they are not the best machines to use. PCs of the 1980s and early 1990s were all about options: you could use whatever flavor of DOS and whatever mix of applications you wanted depending on what your needs and preferences were. Nowadays, you have to make do with what you get in the box because venturing too far outside it leads to nothing but headaches.

[Paranoid]

So I don't know what is going on with the 256mb MMC I have, but it won't hold a format. It will format OK... but the minute I hook it up to my card reader and copy anything over, it corrupts all the data. I'm not sure if it is the reader, or the card... or the OS. I've formated it on my PocketPC... my WinXP machine, my Win98 machine, and a Palm 505... it seems to work fine for copying and moving data in my Pocket PC and my Palm... it is only when I add a desktop to the mix that I get problems. I suppose I could try copying through ActiveSync. Maybe I'll give that a shot...

 

But anyhow... I just went ahead and picked up a RS-MMC card off eBay. $.99 plus $9.00 s/h. The person has a load of them. 32mb. I figured that was more than enough space for the ROMS I plan on loading onto it...

 

So my total cost...

 

$160 CC2, new...

Atari 7800 with 2 sticks and a game, all accessories... $45

2nd Atari 7800, 2 sticks and a game, all accessories... $23

32mb RS-MMC card... $10

ROMS... priceless...

 

$238 including shipping. I can't believe I spent that much on an Atari system. But really, the Cuttle Cart 2 is what eats up most of that budget. But I suppose I wasn't really that interested in having an Xbox 360 anytime soon, anyhow.

 

If my card reader isn't working, I guess I'll be out another $15 for a replacement for that.

 

But... I think I will go ahead and try using ActiveSync to browse to the card on my PPC and see if I can copy them over that way. Can't hurt, I guess.

Edited March 8, 2006 by Paranoid

[Paranoid]

Must be the card reader. I copied all the CC2 folders, the root files, and all the rom images to the right locations using Active Sync, and they all showed up fine. Even copied my Palm apps back to the card, plugged the card back into the Palm, and the Palm sees those applications fine. On the Pocket PC, I can browse and open the .txt files, see the directories... everything looks perfect.

 

Strange. Things were sure a lot simpler before they made everything so easy.