Hacking M3 Real and Future SDHC Cards

[multoque]

Out of curiosity, work-induced boredom, and sheer obsession, I downloaded and read the newly translated M3 Sakura manual today, and found something that was, to me, quite surprising. On page 3, there is a section listing the unit's maximum card capacity at "2GByte" for SD cards and "8GByte" for SDHC cards.

Since the Sakura card's hardware is probably identical to the M3 Real, I assume that this information, if correct, holds true for that card as well. If this information is indeed true for the M3 Real, this disappoints me somewhat. I had sort of just assumed that the Real, being SDHC-compatible, would be capable of addressing future cards with capacities of up to 32GB (the maximum for the SDHC spec, as far as I am aware). As such, I considered the M3 Real to be an excellent "future-proof" buy, as I figured I could up the capacity every so often as memory card prices fell to reasonable levels.

However, I am aware of SDHC-compatible products which are not capable of handling cards above a certain capacity. For example, my phone is SDHC-compatible, but only takes up to 4GB cards. So maybe the same is true of the M3 Real (and Sakura).

Which brings me to the simple question at the end of my long-winded post: does anyone out there have one of the new 12GB microSDHC cards working on his or her M3 Real? I'm told that the 12GB cards are available now, though I couldn't find anywhere to purchase them with a quick web search.

Just curious, as if the max cap. is indeed 8GB, I might consider springing for an 8GB card now, instead of waiting for a more significant upgrade to reach the $30ish price point.

 

[cosmo2389]

I'm not going to say that this is a definite answer, but I read (back when I bought mine in Feb.) that the M3 Real currently could only read up to 8GB SDHC. This implied to me that with future firmware updates the higher capacity cards could eventually be read.

 

[multoque]

Yeah, I remember seeing something to the effect that the Real supported "SDHC cards with capacities 4GB, 6GB, 8GB....." and just assumed that the ellipses on the end implied higher capacity support.

If it is indeed capped at 8GB, I doubt this will be correctable via a future firmware update. As far as I know, the Real does not have upgradeable firmware per se. None of our updates to date have come in the form of a file that flashes the card's internal ROM (like the updates to my old Supercard Lite). I thought the M3 Real was more like the R4, in that "firmware updates" were, in truth, updates to a disk-based operating system.

I guess this all doesn't really matter, though; 12GB+ cards will be commonplace enough in a few months' time (ergo, plenty of people will have tested it out), and I still have a "whopping" 500MB of space left on my existing 6GB.

 

[Perseid]

There isn't much reason hardware wise why SDHC support would stop at 8GB. It is possible the OS can't address over 8GB but that would be fixable with a 'firmware' revision. They probably only said 8GB because they couldn't test on a card that didn't exist and didn't want to claim it would without testing.