Hacking enhanced mode not working with new sd card?

[JJBro1]

I just bought a new kingston class 4 8gb sdhc card and i copied and pasted everything from my old 8gb Sandisk class 2 card to the kingston. When i put the kingston in the cyclo and i try the enhanced mode all i get is to white screens and it hangs. When I put my old card back in everything is normal. Any suggestions to get the enhanced mode working on the new card?

 

[Porkdish]

wait longer. Its probably not hanging, just slow.

 

[JJBro1]

wait longer. Its probably not hanging, just slow.

its hanging all right, even if it was just slow why would it be slower than my old sd card?

 

[Rayder]

I've been trying to tell people that this happens, but all they want to do is act like I don't know what I'm talking about. The CycloDS is very particular about what microSD's it wants to play nice with. I had the exact same issue with a Transcend 8gig Class 6. The Class 6 would boot games, BUT the enhanced menu would take forever to come up or not come up at all, it wouldn't allow a firmware update to complete, Ultimate Mortal Kombat wouldn't boot unless I deleted the save (WTF?!), and occasionally the first-time boot of a game (where it creates the save file) would stick on "loading" until I re-booted.

Now, my Transcend 8gig Class 4 works perfectly fine and NONE of those things happen, it just didn't like the Class 6. I've had people say they have the same Class 6 card and it works fine in their CycloDS......don't know.....it works fine in my cell phone, but acts all flaky the CycloDS.

It's my understanding that you could buy another one of the exact same microSD you are trying to use and it WILL likely work, but the one you have now just doesn't. Nobody has ever given a satisfactory answer as to why this happens. I can only guess that there is something about the CycloDS that makes it extra picky about microSD's. Possibly the microSD isn't 100% perfect or something....who knows. I have heard that the same card that won't work in the Cyclo worked fine in a DSTT or EDGE, so it is definitely something just up with the CycloDS memory card handling and it seems to be extra picky if the microSD i=may not be 100% perfect.

If you can, send the Kingston back and get another, even if it's just a replacement for the same thing. The next one will likely work for you.

 

[Porkdish]

how long do you wait before you determine its hung. i've waited 38 seconds once...

 

[Rayder]

I don't care what anyone says, if the enhanced menu doesn't come up almost instantly (under 5 seconds), something is wrong and the Cyclo has decided it doesn't like the microSD you're using.

But as I said, you could buy two of the exact same microSD's and the Cyclo may work fine with one and be flaky with the other.


Possibly the Cyclo doesn't ignore bad clusters on the microSD like everything else that I've tested that microSD on apparently does.


It is really annoying that the TC forums are down as they are the ONLY people that could even possibly shed some light on this phenomenon with any kind of accuracy, since they built the Cyclo in the first place.

 

[Porkdish]

This sort of complaint has been posted to the forum numerous times with no official response.

The general consensus is the random access time of your sdhc. This differs from brand to brand and within the same make and type of card. Its effected by how much data is on your sd card.

My particular problem card, a transcend class 6 4 gig, works flawlessly right after a format and not particularly full. The menu comes up in 3 seconds on all games. After some use however and exceeding 2/3rds full, it returns to long menu delays.

 

[Rayder]

I don't think response time has anything to do with it. I used to think that too.

Transcend 8gig Class 4 = 1.6ms response time (works perfectly, but naturally I can't play Castlevania PoR)
Transcend 8gig Class 6 = 0.8ms response time (flaky as hell, but there are SD's with even better response time that DO work fine in the Cyclo)

One little theory I had was that maybe this happened because the write speed was slower than the read speed (The Class 4 has roughly the same read/write, where the Class 6 has a slower write by almost half its read speed), causing the Cyclo to lock because it expected the read/write speeds to be nearly the same. This theory was disproved by TC forum members since some same-brand-SD's would work fine and others wouldn't. Besides, there are many SD's that write slower than they read and they work fine in the Cyclo.

One thing that some people noticed was that SD's that didn't work right had a different, slightly smaller formatted size than an exact same brand that did work, which would suggest a few bad clusters on the SD and possibly that was causing the flakiness.

I've had people PM me that their Transcend 8gig Class 6 was flaky too, but on the flipside, I've heard a lot of people say that their Transcend 8gig Class 6 worked perfectly fine. This brings me back to bad clusters on the SD and that the Cyclo is just very sensitive to that flaw. And it IS a CycloDS issue since other brand flashcarts don't have a problem using that same SD that was flaky in the Cyclo.

Bad clusters on the SD sounds like the most reasonable explanation to me anyway.

And just to make clear, this issue isn't just about Transcend SD's. I just used Transcend as an example because that's the flaky SD I have. I think just about ANY SD that has bad clusters will be flaky on a CycloDS. It seems to fit the criteria based on what I remember reading at the TC forums.

 

[Porkdish]

One thing that some people noticed was that SD's that didn't work right had a different, slightly smaller formatted size than an exact same brand that did work, which would suggest a few bad clusters on the SD and possibly that was causing the flakiness.

...

Bad clusters on the SD sounds like the most reasonable explanation to me anyway.

The quote I read said the exact opposite. It was the cards that read as slightly smaller format size that worked flawlessly and that those with the higher blank format size where the consistently flaky version.

The enhanced menu does do a media check when being called. Its got to search for possible text files for the in game text reader and the RTS file for use in real time saving. Its not beyond the realm of possibility that the method in which the menu does this could be improved to make the cyclo ds less picky about how perfect your microSD card is.

It shouldn't be so hit and miss. If you go to the effort to buy a reputable brand with a good read/write speed you've done your part as far as I'm concerned and the rest is up to team cylco to deal with.

 

[Sticks]

It's completely random.

I've had over 10+ microSD (2GB), ~5 microSDHC 4GB and two 8GB microSDHC (Sandisk Mobile Ultra C6 and an OEM C4) and the loading times of the Enhanced Menu are completely random across all cards. I had a thread up on the cycloDS forums a LONG time back, haven't really bothered to update it because the results were completely random. Didn't matter what class they were, what manufacturer (though Adata 4GB were problematic) or RAT. Though I admit I didn't bother to check out the capacity of the cards, probably should've - most of them are long gone out of my hands.

All said, i'm currently using a 8GB Sandisk Mobile Ultra Class 6 and i'm getting the Enhanced Menu loading in ~1-1.5 seconds. Best card yet.

 

[Rayder]

All my old 2gig cards work in the Cyclo just fine, and the class 4 8gig works too, the enhanced menu comes up in less than 2 seconds on ALL of them.

The 2gig'ers tested were:
2 -Kingston Japan
Kingston Taiwan
Transcend (Taiwan)
Sandisk (don't rem region)

All of those worked fine and all of them were loaded up to within 100megs of being full. It was only the class 6 8gig that's flaky.......and it had about 3.5 gigs free.