Hello all,

My september departure date draws near and soon I shall be bound for Japan..

Ki wo tsukete, Nihonjin-tachi !

( heehee...I'm actually quite inocuous for an American...I just wanna learn Japanese...)

So I've purchased a new digital camera. It's a realatively cheap $100 (on sale from $180 ) 5.1mp afair. Upon being questioned, both the camera sales rep, and the memory card rep said that using high(er) speed cards in a camera like this (read: in a camera this cheap) wouldn't make much difference and would basically amount to overspending.

But these were FRY'S reps, so I take it with a grain of salt (having been such an individual fro a VERY brief time myself).

But as I stood gazing into the flash media display case I noticed 2 SD cards...among others of course.

Both were 512MB, but one was 60x and the other was 120x. The latter was $60, only $10 more than the 60x. True, the reps said that the camera couldn't really benefit from faster media, but my question to all of you is...

...can the Zaurus ?

I already purchsed a 512MB SD for my C1000 back right when I recqived it. This was a few months ago, so it was definitely one of the older 26x or whatever the standard was around march...it certainly isn't marked Hi-Speed. But if my cheap camera isn't gonna care one way or the other I'll gladly throw that card in the canera and purchase a new one for my Z.

Upgrading to 1 gig is kind of tempting, but no matter what capacity I end up buying, I'm curious if the Zaurus can benefit from faster speed SD media...particularly for movie playback. If it is a real improvement I'll probably go for it, even though the warranty on the slower card was litteraly 5 times longer...

Any advice/info you guys care to share is appreciated!

Thanks!

I believe the SD card slot on the Zaurus is in reality a MMC card slot (MMC cards being compatible with SD, but slower). So no, unless I am mistaken there is no advantage to getting a faster card in your case.

I think that it is actually an SD slot, but an MMC controller on the software side.
Since, IMHO, there are no opensource SD drivers out there, there's no much that can be done... or isn't it like that?
On the other side, let's say you've got an slow MMC card, when you use it on the Z it will work together with Z's MMC driver, but I don't think you'll ever get the MMC maximum speed, as always happens for different reasons.
So this makes me think that if we use a faster card (with slower delays, etc.) with a slower driver, we might, indeed, get some speed improvement, unless in the limits of MMC specs.
I need to try that one of these days...
It is true, also, that I could be completely wrong here, of course.

Even if one could fully utilize the SD interface on the Zaurus, the CPU is still going to be a bottleneck. Anything going to or from SD (or CF) has to get pushed through the kernel (and SRAM). The fact that fast CF cards (which have a full 16-bit parallel interface) don't perform much better on the Zaurus than fast SD cards says that the speed of the media (and it's physical interface) isn't really the limiting factor. Save your $10 unless you are going to use the card in a PC that can really take advantage of the extra speed.

if its too fast, zaurus wont do it.

but it can already do videos with slow sd cards as it is.

BTW, if you're looking at 512mb SD cards for around $50, don't. Try NewEgg. I just got a new *1gb* SD card from them, 66x, for under $60 including shipping.

- Informal timings (stopwatch, no bonnie) of my Lexar 256MB SD (no speed rating) vs the wife unit's SanDisk Ultra II 1GB SD (rated "66x") showed no significant speed difference during a large file copy to or from. I concluded that the C1K does not make use of faster media, and have a "normal" 1GB SD card enroute for $50.
- I do know the Lexar plays mpgs without the slightest glitch, and they look pretty sweet, so it's possible to do video from SD if it's encoded right. These are just things I snagged off the web ... there are plenty of posts in the forum about video encoding for Z playback, that I may just be looking at once that card gets here. (snicker) Don't know that I could watch an entire episode of Firefly on Hiro, anyway. (wall-eyed stare)
- Additionally, the forum contains numerous posts about 2GB media consistenty failing in the Z, so while I could afford one, I got the 1GB instead. Just tossing that out 'cause I can...

If the Z is indeed an mmc slot.... as other posts have suggested, a 2gig mmc might work, right?

Has anyone tried a 2gig mmc in any Z on any rom?

Thanks for the tip big G. I paid about $3 LESS than I would have spent at Fry's and got 2x the capacity and it was still a 66x card from newegg.

I just hope it, and my folding keyboard (the fellowes rubber one begins to annoy me) get here before my departure date.

After fiddling with my new camera for a while I don't know which card will end up where. Taking pictures at the highest resolution produces about 1 - 1.5 MB pics. Even a 512 mb card can hold hundreds of those, whereas the 512mb card is already half full when being used as *permanent* storage on my Z...

More field research is needed here I think...

Glad to help. I hate to see people throw away money.

Big G. I like the sound of that..