Detecting locked card

regulus

4

Detecting locked card

« on: 11 / December / 2014, 04:08:22 »

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I used to use my Canon PowerShot A460 with a 2 GB SD card. I recently tried it with a 32 GB microSD card (within the enclosed SD adapter). It works. One question pertaining to CHDK -- when I switch the lock on the 32 GB one (so that the CHDK would run), the camera detects that the card is locked and doesn't let me do anything. Any idea why the lock is detected on this 32 GB card, whereas the 2 GB works without detection? Is there any way to make CHDK work on the 32 GB card then?

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zeno

891

Re: Detecting locked card

« Reply #1 on: 11 / December / 2014, 04:18:37 »

I presume you have properly installed CHDK on the card. Since the A460 is an old camera it has to boot from a FAT16 partition and 4GB is the biggest size for FAT16. So you need a card with two partitions - a small primary FAT16 one with the DISKBOOT.BIN on it and a large FAT32 one with CHDK scripts (and your photos).

If the large partition was made the primary partition by mistake, you'd get what you saw - the camera complaining that the card was locked. That would also happen if you'd just tried to put CHDK on a single partitioned FAT32 card.

Did you use STICK to set up CHDK?

http://www.zenoshrdlu.com/stick/stick.html

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A570, S100, Ixus 127
Author of ASSIST, STICK, WASP, ACID, SDMInst, LICKS, WICKS, MacBoot, UBDB, CFGEdit

regulus

4

Re: Detecting locked card

« Reply #2 on: 11 / December / 2014, 04:29:17 »

I see. I suppose I haven't properly installed it on the "new" card.

I was nicely surprised that this camera even detected the 32 GB card, so later on I simply copied the content from the 2 GB one to the 32 GB one ("see what happens"

).

I'll have a look into this. It's been years since I prepared the 2 GB card (and I'm not sure I had to do anything other than copying the files and write-protecting the card back then).

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waterwingz

12138

Re: Detecting locked card

« Reply #3 on: 11 / December / 2014, 09:07:00 »

Quote from: regulus on 11 / December / 2014, 04:29:17

I'm not sure I had to do anything other than copying the files and write-protecting the card back then.

You did. If the SD card is not properly prepared it won't autoboot when the SD card lock is enabled. It has always been that way.

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Ported : A1200 SD940 G10 Powershot N G16

zeno

891

Re: Detecting locked card

« Reply #4 on: 11 / December / 2014, 12:00:25 »

It's worth pointing out that if you are a Windows user, cards bigger than 4GB used with old cameras (released before January 2011) are a bit of a pain. If you take a load of photos and want to transfer them to your computer using a card reader, you have to switch partitions (because otherwise Windows will only show you the active, small partition). And then, before you can put the card back in the camera, you have to switch partitions again (so that CHDK can boot from the small partition).

My WASP utility (see http://www.zenoshrdlu.com/wasp/wasp.html) does the job, but it's an annoying thing.

Mac OSX and Linux users don't have this problem since both operating systems will show you both partitions at the same time (as separate 'drives').

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A570, S100, Ixus 127
Author of ASSIST, STICK, WASP, ACID, SDMInst, LICKS, WICKS, MacBoot, UBDB, CFGEdit