SD cards for Replicator 2X

[Jeffrey Birt]

The SD card that came with one of my Replicator 2Xs fell apart. I glued the case back together but, something internally broke as well as neither the MB nor my PC will recognize the card (it actually caused a BSOD on Win7!)

I have done a lot of searching on this subject and it seems that the MB does not like SD cards > 2GB. The smallest ones I have laying around are 4GB and gave a 'SD card error' on the Rep2x (yes they were formatted FAT16). I suspect that I won't being able to find such a 'tiny' SD card locally, hey are cheap enough on line at around $5/ea though. Before I order a handful of them to have on hand in case another bites the dust I wanted to check and see if there was anything else 'magical' about the SD card format/name etc. that the machine will use. I have a dozen of these 4GB Kingston cards around so if I can use them I would prefer that option.

Any ideas?

[Jetguy]

Upgrade the bot to Sailfish firmware which can read larger cards and gives you more features long term anyway.

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:32084

http://www.makerbot.com/sailfish/install/

http://jettyfirmware.yolasite.com/

 

It doesn't void your warranty (you don't have one anyway, who are we kidding???) and can use all the common software you use now (Still can print from Makerware and so on normally)

[Jetguy]

Just for reference on the warranty comment http://www.makerbot.com/legal/customer-service/

"We will provide parts or service on items that prove to be defective from the time of manufacture, and we’ll work with you to get your product running again. For more information on MakerBot’s Limited Warranty, please see makerbot.com/legal."

So finally, here's the real link http://www.makerbot.com/legal/warranty/

" (d) Warranty Period. Six (6) months after date of delivery to first End-User (“Warranty Period”)."

 

 

So it looks like they've updated it from the last time I looked. Let's just say previously it was very different.

Point being, Sailfish doesn't void it.

[Dan Newman]

On 07/03/2014, 8:26 AM, Jetguy wrote:
> Upgrade the bot to Sailfish firmware which can read larger cards and gives
> you more features long term anyway.
> http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:32084
> http://www.makerbot.com/sailfish/install/
> http://jettyfirmware.yolasite.com/
>
> It doesn't void your warranty (you don't have one anyway, who are we
> kidding???) and can use all the common software you use now (Still can
> print from Makerware and so on normally)

And MBI even supports Sailfish. List of differences from Sailfish and MBI
firmware are at

http://jettyfirmware.yolasite.com/features.php

Note that the next release of MakerWare supports setting Sailfish onboard
parameters. Presently you can only do it from MW for Sailfish on ToMs *or*
by installing the MW EEPROM maps which you can download from the Sailfish
thing at thingiverse. Of course, you can use RepG 40r23 - Sailfish to
set onboard parameters.

Dan

[Jeffrey Birt]

Thanks guys but I have no desire to muck with the firmware. I have students using these machines and don't need additional headaches.

[Ryan Carlyle]

You can just order a pack of Sandisk 2gb cards from Amazon.

[Jetguy]

"I have no desire to muck with firmware"

Well, before you make such a statement, you might want to know some facts because you assume that stock firmware is somehow "safer" than alternate firmware. This is just you not knowing what you are up against.

 

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/makerbot/pYj86vuCDQk/IP85zLSnzU8J

From Dan Newman,

"Finally, know that MBI's firmware does absolutely no error checking of
data read from the SD card. So, it could be that for whatever reason you're
getting a data read error. Sailfish can perform error checking of all
data reads and write to the SD card. That functionality is off by default
but can be enabled from the LCD display (Utilities > General Settings).
If there is a read error, Sailfish will attempt to re-read the data. It
will try up to 5 times to read the data. If it fails all 5 times for a
given data block, then it cancels the print and informs you of the error."

 

Now why that matters in this discussion:

You broke the only 2GB card you had. 2GB cards are simply no longer made. If you find a 2GB card, it is generally a bad larger card that has been modified at manufacture to only show lower capacity. So those 2GB cards that Ryan linked might be legit New Old Stock (NOS) or they might be someone supsect cards with reduced capacity. Given the fact stock firmware doesn't check SD card reads, it's then a double whammy that you might now buy cards that you think are OK and then have problems because you decided stock firmware was the safer bet.

 

So sorry if this seems like I'm pressuring you, but maybe you should do some reasearch and think on the decision. I'm just saying you equated flashing a new firmware to "mucking around" and the truth is, the real mucking around is using suspect cards on stock firmware and thinking all will be OK.

 

If the problems that get posted here in the forum about every other week "bad SD card reads" then you are in for a long road ahead.

Or, you might get lucky and those SD cards linked work. But one day, if they fail or get broken, you'll really be up the creek without a paddle. But that's what this forum and alternate firmware is about, community support that provides better options than the stock support and options MakerBot gives you.

[Jetguy]

The reason I'm being hard on this topic today is that for EVERYONE here in the group, this is a valid topic and actually should be a lot more concern than is being raised.

 

I get the desire to keep a machine stock. I wish I could tell you that was the right answer.

 

What should be happening is that you, the USERS and OWNERS of the machines should be hammering MakerBot to develop the next release of firmware to support >2GB SD cards, the ability to check SD card reads, and if NOT, and if they cannot get their act together and provide a firmare that does those things, then sell CERTIFIED SD cards in the store that are validated to work and also garantee they can maintain a supply of those.

 

Because again, there is a massive problem looming rapidly upon the thousands of MakerBot owners that 2GB and smaller SD cards are drying up. New cards labeled 2GB may not work and may not be reliable. It might cause a LOT MORE headaches keeping the stock firmwares everyone has now and then slowing being forced into sketchy SD cards. Ultimately, this will kill MBI on support costs by doing the nothing they are doing now. 

[Dan Newman]

On 07/03/2014, 8:57 AM, Jeffrey Birt wrote:
> Thanks guys but I have no desire to muck with the firmware. I have students
> using these machines and don't need additional headaches.

Then you need to figure out how to format your 4GB cards as FAT-16. I used
to know how to do it on OS X 10.6, but Apple then changed things around and
the commands no longer worked. By default, most machines will format them
as FAT-32 which you cannot use with the stock MBI firmware.

Dan

[Jeffrey Birt]

Jetguy, I made no such assumptions. Adding third party firmware only adds complications and another variable. I'm sure you like the firmware but it is not an avenue I want to explore.

Dan, formatting the 4GB card as FAT16 is not an issue (I mentioned I had done that in my first post.) The problem is that the MB won't read a partition over 2GB. Even partitioning the SD card with two 2GB partitions and formatting them FAT16 the MB still can't read it. I suspect this procedure might work on some cards but it does not on the Kingston 4GB cards I have.

I guess I'll buy 10 2GB cards so I have spares :)

On Friday, March 7, 2014 10:18:08 AM UTC-6, Jeffrey Birt wrote:

[Dan Newman]

On 07/03/2014, 12:26 PM, Jeffrey Birt wrote:
> Jetguy, I made no such assumptions. Adding third party firmware only adds
> complications and another variable. I'm sure you like the firmware but it
> is not an avenue I want to explore.

I'm not advocating that you run Sailfish -- I try not to push people towards it
since, after all, I am far from partial. But for folks tuning in who are
not aware, MBI's firmware is largely Sailfish, just with different UI features
and less bug fixes. MBI supported Jetty and myself in porting Sailfish
from the Cupcake and Thing-o-Matic to the Replicators. They then adopted
Sailfish for their 7.0 release but used their LCD UI layout and first
run features. In the "official" Sailfish, we've tossed all the first
run features and used that space to add in advanced features (e.g.,
change temps on the fly, change print speed on the fly, richer SD
card support, etc.). We also tend to be ahead of MBI on bug fixes.
Plenty of folks within MBI run Sailfish. And MBI the MBI support team
supports Sailfish. (MBI even distributes Sailfish binaries for ToMs.)

Again, you should run what you're comfortable with. I just from time
to time like to spell out the above for when folks do searches and
stumble into threads.

> Dan, formatting the 4GB card as FAT16 is not an issue (I mentioned I had
> done that in my first post.) The problem is that the MB won't read a
> partition over 2GB.

You cannot have a partition larger than 2GB if it is FAT-16. So,
if the partition was larger than 2GB, you categorically did not format it
as FAT-16.

> Even partitioning the SD card with two 2GB partitions
> and formatting them FAT16 the MB still can't read it.

Cannot have two partitions: the MBI usage of the SD card library will not
accomodate that. You need to format a single, 2 GB partition
and as FAT-16. You may not be able to do that without special software
tools. It is possible: I used to do it and FlashForge distributes
their bots with 4GB cards properly formatted and working on stock
MBI firmware. (This causes a problem when folks decide to reformat
their card and then find it's now FAT-32.)

Dan

[Jetguy]

Call me crazy - formatting a card in a non-standard format sounds like an accident "waiting to happen".

It's just a rather complex ruleset for users to remember?

Now, before I begin the lesson, will those of you who are playing in the match this afternoon move your clothes down onto the lower peg immediately after lunch, before you write your letter home, if you're not getting your hair cut, unless you've got a younger brother who is going out this weekend as the guest of another boy, in which case, collect his note before lunch, put it in your letter after you've had your hair cut, and make sure he moves your clothes down onto the lower peg for you. Now,--
WYMER: Sir?
HUMPHREY: Yes, Wymer?
WYMER: My younger brother's going out with Dibble this weekend, sir, but I'm not having my hair cut today, sir. So, do I move my clothes down, or--
HUMPHREY: I do wish you'd listen, Wymer. It's perfectly simple. If you're not getting your hair cut, you don't have to move your brother's clothes down to the lower peg. You simply collect his note before lunch, after you've done your scripture prep, when you've written your letter home, before rest, move your own clothes onto the lower peg, greet the visitors, and report to Mr. Viney that you've had your chit signed.

[Gary Crowell]

Sailfish relieves headaches.   Take two and you'll print better in the morning.

Gary

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[Joseph Chiu]

Jeffrey,

I completely sympathize with your desire to not add any changes to your setup.  When I first got my Replicator (pre-MBI acceleration days), I dragged my feet to upgrade it because it was my "production" machine.

But, if you get ave a chance to play with it once the school year is over, I suggest you give it a try - the added features really help improve the usability of the machine, including the ability to use SDHC cards.

Joseph

--

[Jeffrey Birt]

Dan, I tried creating a 2GB partition and leaving the rest of the card un-allocated. That did not work either. And, yes you have to use some sort of portioning utility to do this.

I appreciate the suggestions w.r.t. Sailfish but am not interested in a third party firmware so that option is off the table. I got in touch with Makerbot yesterday and they said most 2gb or less cards 'should' work. I know from my own experience with embedded development that not all SD cards are created equal and some just don't play nice (they can draw a huge surge of power when inserted, etc.). I ordered a few cards from MB so the problem is solved.

I was getting ready to toss the bad card in the trash but popped the case apart to look inside. Much to my surprise I found a uSD card! It was glued in with conductive epoxy via two of the normal contacts on the end of the card and a grid of contacts that are normally covered on the back of the card (if you look at a uSD card you can see them under the thin outer plastic covering.) I cleaned off the card edge contacts and popped it in an SD adapter. Windows did recognize the card, but it only showed up as 31MB.

On Friday, March 7, 2014 10:18:08 AM UTC-6, Jeffrey Birt wrote:

[Dan Newman]

On 08/03/2014, 8:36 AM, Jeffrey Birt wrote:
> Dan, I tried creating a 2GB partition and leaving the rest of the card
> un-allocated. That did not work either. And, yes you have to use some sort
> of portioning utility to do this.

I suspect that some clever engineer in China spent the better part of a
day figuring out the exact magic incantation to do this with the 4GB cards
they've been supplying with the clones. However, I'm sure you know how
to balance your time vs. buying N 2GB cards and will make the best
decision for your situation.

> I was getting ready to toss the bad card in the trash but popped the case
> apart to look inside. Much to my surprise I found a uSD card!

I have a friend who works for Toshiba in their storage products division.
About a year ago, I spoke with him about these 2GB cards. He told me that
no one was specifically making 2GB cards any more. The small cards sold
these days were all made to service a "higher" cause but then sorted to
the bottom of the heap and were laser trimmed to be SDSC and 2GB before
slabbing. And, therein my lie some of the different behaviors you've
seen. The ASICs on the cards are primarily intended to handle the SDHC
and SDXC protocols. They get told by the laser trimming to instead behave
as SDSC cards and their implementation of SDSC may not be bang on correct
and thus have quirky behaviors which, while Windows/OS X/Linux may be able
to cope with, a bare bones Arduino implementation may not.

We went ahead and added support for newer SD cards in Sailfish for
exactly this reason. Not so much as to have a feature that MBI's firmware
did not have, but rather because we were trying to future-proof the
firmware against this issue. (And, no I'm not still trying to sell you
on Sailfish: I'm just pointing out for the list why we added this to
the firmware. Requires some justification as it eats over 8K
of code space.)

Dan

[Erik Mendoza]

Jeffrey,

You should read what Dan is saying and understand, this is really not "Third Party Software". If you do a little research on the matter you would understand that MB's firmware is based on Sailfish with not as frequent updates. So in essence you are working on OLD firmware. Sailfish could possibly eliminate your SD card woes, and I personally haven't heard of one person having issues running it, (Disclaimer: I run the latest stable version of sailfish, and have not had a single problem, and also have an 8gb Toshiba SD card in use).

It's really not difficult to install, it works fine with MB's Makerware, and the people here can and will give you a hand if you get stumped for some reason. It really looks like you are spending more time trying to figure out a solution when there is already a simple answer.

Please understand we are all here to help, and there has been a LOT of time and work put into Sailfish, and Dan, or Jetty, wouldn't recommend you doing something to your bot that is not beneficial.

[Joseph Chiu]

Supposedly, there are way to reprogram these cards to change their reported size (and brand name, etc.) -- http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=3554  

Hmmm, maybe there's a market for downgraded fake 2GB cards!  :)

For a while, Amazon carried Dane-Elec "Canon" cards (http://www.amazon.com/DANE-ELEC-Secure-Digital-Memory/dp/B002OM81SU/ref=sr_1_4?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1394304150&sr=1-4&keywords=dane-elec+canon) as Amazon add-on's.  I bought a handful of those (six, I think?) -- at least two of those turned out to be immediate duds on my Replicator.  One worked fine for a very long time (and was my "daily driver") until it one day developed an error on one particular file. (I was running an older pre-SD-error-check version of Sailfish at the time.  Since then, I'm on the latest official release and have been happily using a large capacity card and making liberal use of folders.)   Hopefully, you'll have a reasonable usable yield like I did.

--

[Narrowband]

Just to clarify a point on Sailfish and SDHC cards...

If Sailfish supports cards larger than 2GB, and FAT16 maxes out at 2GB, does that mean Sailfish supports cards formatted as FAT32?  Or just that the cards can be physically larger than 2GB but still have to be formatted FAT16 to just use the first 2GB of capacity?

Thanks!

On Friday, March 7, 2014 4:10:47 PM UTC-5, dnewman wrote:

[Jeffrey Birt]

Erik - I don't know how to be more clear..I AM NOT INTERESTED IN USING A DIFFERERNET FIRMWARE! I'm not trying to be difficult or mean BUT I'm just tired of having everyone tell me to use Sailfish. If you like it I'm happy for you, I'm not interested, period...

Dan - Using the 'good' parts of memory chips, or rating ICs by how they test is the norm. I can remember that back in the day the Radio Shack Color Computer was released with 32K of memory. It had 8, 8K RAM chips but they got a deal of RAM where only half the chip was good so they sorted them out by if the error was in upper memory or lower address and put 8 like chips on the board. You could double the memory to a whopping 64K by using completely good chips and moving a few jumpers. Of course that still did not hold a candle to my C64 with 1MB of RAM :)

On Friday, March 7, 2014 10:18:08 AM UTC-6, Jeffrey Birt wrote:

[Dan Newman]

On 08/03/2014, 1:13 PM, Narrowband wrote:
> Just to clarify a point on Sailfish and SDHC cards...
>
> If Sailfish supports cards larger than 2GB, and FAT16 maxes out at 2GB,
> does that mean Sailfish supports cards formatted as FAT32? Or just that
> the cards can be physically larger than 2GB but still have to be formatted
> FAT16 to just use the first 2GB of capacity?

Sailfish supports a single FAT-32 partition on an SD card. Also supports
directory folders on SD cards. Also supports dumping your entire EEPROM
to SD card as well as restoring your EEPROM from an SD card dump. Also
supports SD card CRC checking and re-reads.

Dan

[Dan Newman]

On 08/03/2014, 1:17 PM, Jeffrey Birt wrote:
>
> Erik - I don't know how to be more clear..I AM NOT INTERESTED IN USING A
> DIFFERERNET FIRMWARE! I'm not trying to be difficult or mean BUT I'm just
> tired of having everyone tell me to use Sailfish. If you like it I'm happy
> for you, I'm not interested, period...
>
> Dan - Using the 'good' parts of memory chips, or rating ICs by how they
> test is the norm.

Understood. I never meant to imply it was unusual or a bad practice.
Thank goodness they do this in the first place. Anyone who used to buy
electronic components in the 60's and 70's knows just how infrequent
bad components are these days relative to days past. And, this is of course
how they sell resistors with 1%, 2%, and 5% tolerances. They sort them
as part of the testing process. The larger point though is that 2GB
and smaller cards are slowly becoming harder to come by and may go the
way of 5.25" floppy disks. You can still get them....

Dan

[Gary Crowell]

On Sat, Mar 8, 2014 at 2:17 PM, Jeffrey Birt <jeff.b...@gmail.com> wrote:

Erik - I don't know how to be more clear..I AM NOT INTERESTED IN USING A DIFFERERNET FIRMWARE!

I find this hilarious, as you are already availing yourself of the best feature of Sailfish:  The support given on this forum by Dan.  Are you getting any useful answers on this out of Makerbot?

Gary

 

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----------------------------------------------
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Linkedin  Elance  KE7FIZ

[Jeffrey Birt]

Imagine you go into a diner and order meatloaf. The waitress tells you how great the chicken is and you say 'no thanks I want the meatloaf'. Then the waitress proceeds to argue with you for an hour and treat you like an imbecile because you don't want the chicken.

Dan has been nothing but nice, I have no problem with him. Many of the rest of just don't seem to grasp the point that whether or not you think the chicken is the best meal in the world I'm not interested. I've tried to be polite but gotten a lot of grief in the process. Gary, if you had bothered to read my messages above you would have seen that I was in contact with MakerBot and they were helpful. In fact I got a response within a few hours of sending an email, they even offered to send me a replacement card. As the machine is a year old I did not feel it was a warranty issue and while their offer was nice I felt I would be taking advantage so I called and ordered three SD cards. They were a bit more expensive but I know they will work and the problem is solved.

[Ryan Carlyle]

Jeff, it's not wrong to want to stick with the stock firmware, but I think you're a little bit off with your metaphor. This is more like you asking the waitress for help scraping the ketchup off your meatloaf, and when she offers to give you a free made-to-order meatloaf without ketchup, you insist you'd rather just eat around the ketchup because it's already sitting in front of you.

AND THAT'S FINE -- you have a right to stick with the stock firmware. But people are trying to help you fix your root problem rather than helping you come up with a kludge. Don't get mad about that.

I'm still running stock firmware, mostly out of laziness. But I'm going to switch eventually, because Sailfish is unequivocally better than the MBI firmware. It's simply programmed with a higher standard of quality. The MBI code I've looked at is not very good. 

[Jetguy]

More importantly, let's get to the crux of the problem.

Jeff came HERE, to a group of FELLOW OWNERS asking questions first.

He's unhappy with the answer given and decided to go his own route.

The problem STILL exists for the thousands of OTHER users. The goal of this forum is to help all users, not JUST Jeff. That's WHY it's public and not some private email between Jeff and tech support.

Jeff at this point should ignore this thread.

The reason is No need to further involve Jeff, he's "checked out" with the answer of resorting to buying SD cards from MakerBot.

That answer is NOT acceptable for owners in foreign countries. It's not acceptable long term.

The bottom line answer is MakerBot needs to announce firmware support for SDHC cards just as Sailfish has been able to do.

It's the only viable answer in the bigger picture.

[AL M]

If someone would not mind why SD not USB other than not having the printer close enough to the computer I installed SailFish and USB has been working very well for me 

[Jeffrey Birt]

I asked a simple question about what SD might or might not work. When presented with the idea of using a different firmware I said 'No thanks'. That's it. You may agree or disagree with my reasoning, who cares? I amuses me that I'm being painted as being painted as the bad guy for not being interested in third part firmware.

Jetguy, you try to help out a lot, your attitude of always being right and anybody who disagrees with you is stupid sucks. It makes you look like a prick.

Don't worry I won't participate in this forum/group again. I asked a simple question and disagreed with one possible solution and caught a lot of grief for it.

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[Jetguy]

I award you no points and may God have mercy on your soul.

[AL M]

Some guys like HotDogs some like Steak

[Scottbee]

The wizards and experts will tell you that printing over USB is fraught with peril.  Apparently the USB communication protocol is not very robust and doesn't do error-handling and retries very well.  I believe that Dan has mentioned that improvements were made in the Sailfish firmware, but it is still not ideal.

That being said, I started using my printer "long" before I found this forum and was exposed to this information... so I started down a bad road and developed bad habits (and like my other bad habits, I tend not to break them readily).  On my specific machine (R2X with the RevH MB and MBI firmware) I have done about 600 hours of printing over USB with no (observable) problems that I can specifically attribute to USB communication errors.  This has been done using both MakerWare and S3D.  I have tried a whopping 3 prints via the SD card, and my failure rate is 33% due to "SD Card Read" errors.  My only real gripe is that S3D suspends the USB communication during file dialogues.... so you will get a printing "pause" until that operation has completed (which I am sure could destroy a model if it went on a long time due to localized heat-soak).

The wizards and experts have given good and solid technical basis for their recommendation to NOT use the USB for printing.  And my described "luck" is purely anecdotal and based on a singular data point....  so I would never begin to suggest that anybody follow my route.

[Jetguy]

I just hate muddying the waters with USB VS SD in this thread. Fundamentally, the OP raised a very valid question and problem that is bigger than his individual issue.

What is really missing here is an official response from MakerBot that doesn't include buying SD card from them.

The bot is advertised to work with SD cards, except that they "forget" to post the rather long list of limitations surrounding that. Right now, there is an issue of no longer readily being able to buy suitable cards, We've outlined the how and why behind why common and cheap 2GB cards can be more of a problem then they are worth only making the issue even worse. Nothing worse than a print stopping in the middle only to find out the cheap SD card caused you to waste untold hours of time and plastic. The entire goal of the discussion was to educate everyone and push MakerBot to provide a suitable solution for EVERYONE.

[Gary Crowell]

On Sun, Mar 9, 2014 at 8:47 AM, Jeffrey Birt <jeff.b...@gmail.com> wrote:

...

Jetguy, you try to help out a lot, your attitude of always being right and anybody who disagrees with you is stupid sucks. It makes you look like a prick.

There are many here who would agree with you, except for the inconvenient fact that he *is* so often right. 

And, I was out of line.  You got the answer you wanted from Makerbot.  A terribly short-sighted answer, but you're blind to that.

Gary