Preferred SD Card for ZXpand+

[PaulKD]

Hello friends,

Can anyone say whether there is a brand of SD card which works best with the ZXpand+? I have had issues with mine, getting error 0/3 when I try to load from CAT. Someone here suggested that it could be an issue with the SD card. I did have files on the card, and was loading and running some of them without issues, until I went to remove and add files to the card... once I returned the card to the drive on the ZXpand, I was no longer able to load files ...
Any help would be appreciated, and thank you in advance.

Kind Regards¬Paul

[mrtinb]

I believe using the SD-Formatter program to format your card before usage is a good idea.

I believe there is also an issue that firmware cannot be updated from a large SD-card. I think the firmware update might only work on a SD card formatted with FAT16. I cannot remember. I just know I have an old SD card for this purpose.

[TMAOne]

I can think of one thing it definitely might be,... there are "fake" memory devices (SD cards, thumbdrives) floating around out there, particularly on fleaBay.

The memory addresses are "wrapped", i.e. later addresses point to the same actual locations as early previous addresses. The device will report say, 16 GB to the host operating system, but only the first 4 are any good. Once you fill it past that point, the new files overwrite old locations. The new files are okay, the previous ones suddenly pooched.

It is very frustrating, and can be quite some time until you figure out what's actually going on. By then you've lost your vacation to the Caribbean in favor of Season 3 of Get Smart. The indexes for your precious pictures are still there, but the "files" are now unreadable.

Search the Net and download the easily found program h2testw.exe, which tests these memory devices. Back up your (recoverable) data first (because h2test2 clobbers the whole device), and run the utility. It will pronounce your memory device sound, or no.

Good luck.

[Moggy]

I personally use SanDisk cards, a mixture of 2 and 4 gig with audio files on a 16 gig.
I have found that regular Sandisk cards work well but have had trouble with some of their extended format cards (those with Xs etc in their title. )

The card can be formatted as FAT 12,16 or 32 and will firmware flash from either one ( all of mine do at least)

Is it possible you have formatted your card as NTFS? if so it might explain the error you are getting?

The manual should you not have it can be found here and it includes a link to a formatting tool recommended for Mac systems by Sir Morris the spand creator...

https://github.com/charlierobson/ZXpand ... ine-Manual

If none of the above applies then I can only think it is a firmware problem or a problem with the SD card slot itself.

[msknight]

with audio files on a 16 gig.

I was going to save the question of how you did the audio playing from the zeddy for another day, but that's partially answered my question

[Moggy]

with audio files on a 16 gig.

I was going to save the question of how you did the audio playing from the zeddy for another day, but that's partially answered my question

It's a combination of soft/hard ware, a touch of solder and some musical knowledge re compression techniques that's resulted in surprisingly good audio the details of which I will happily PM you should you have a genuine interest.