Cameraderie and devices >2GB

[Alex Taylor]

I recently got a new 8GB memory stick for my digital camera.

Now, I usually use Cameraderie in PTP mode to get the pictures off it.
But I've discovered that it won't read the new memory stick, perhaps
because it's larger than 2GB (?)...

The first time I tried it, it just said it couldn't read the device.

I tried again today to check the exact message, but now whenever I open
Cameraderie with the camera plugged in, the system instantly traps.
(The trapdump is corrupted so I unfortunately can't get the trap screen
data.)


I also tried switching over to USB-MSD mode, but that doesn't work
either because of the size of the device. (It doesn't work under
Win2K either, for what it's worth, although it does work under XP.)

Does anyone have experience with getting pictures off a camera with a
very large memory stick?

[Peter Brown]

Hi Alex

Post by Alex Taylor
I recently got a new 8GB memory stick for my digital camera.
Now, I usually use Cameraderie in PTP mode to get the pictures off it.
But I've discovered that it won't read the new memory stick, perhaps
because it's larger than 2GB (?)...
The first time I tried it, it just said it couldn't read the device.
I tried again today to check the exact message, but now whenever I open
Cameraderie with the camera plugged in, the system instantly traps.
(The trapdump is corrupted so I unfortunately can't get the trap screen
data.)
I also tried switching over to USB-MSD mode, but that doesn't work
either because of the size of the device. (It doesn't work under
Win2K either, for what it's worth, although it does work under XP.)
Does anyone have experience with getting pictures off a camera with a
very large memory stick?

With regard to "USB-MSD mode": Did you make the 8GB memory stick into a
Volume using LVM before trying to access it?

Regards

Pete

[Pierre Jelenc]

Post by Peter Brown
With regard to "USB-MSD mode": Did you make the 8GB memory stick into a
Volume using LVM before trying to access it?

I have the same problem as Alex. I needed to extract some pictures from a
4GB SDHC card from a Lumix camera. However, when I plugged it into the
reader I use for my 1GB cards, LVM /RediscoverPRM seemed to go into some
infinite loop, with CPU usage at 100%. I let it run for 5 minutes, but
nothing happened and I had to kill the process.

The card works fine in at least 3 different models of cameras.

Pierre

[Ilya Zakharevich]

Post by Pierre Jelenc

Post by Peter Brown
With regard to "USB-MSD mode": Did you make the 8GB memory stick into a
Volume using LVM before trying to access it?

I have the same problem as Alex. I needed to extract some pictures from a
4GB SDHC card from a Lumix camera. However, when I plugged it into the
reader I use for my 1GB cards, LVM /RediscoverPRM seemed to go into some
infinite loop, with CPU usage at 100%. I let it run for 5 minutes, but
nothing happened and I had to kill the process.
The card works fine in at least 3 different models of cameras.

My standard response to problems like these is: upgrade to FDISK-based
DASD. LVM was a nice idea to have in mind, but the implementation is
not acceptable for production use.

[I do not have any problem like this... - but one also should
remember some options on CONFIG.SYS; mine are /CHS on the USBMSD
line - otherwise >100GB drives had problems.]

Hope this helps,
Ilya

[Peter Brown]

Hi Pierre

Post by Pierre Jelenc

Post by Peter Brown
With regard to "USB-MSD mode": Did you make the 8GB memory stick into a
Volume using LVM before trying to access it?

I have the same problem as Alex. I needed to extract some pictures from a
4GB SDHC card from a Lumix camera. However, when I plugged it into the
reader I use for my 1GB cards, LVM /RediscoverPRM seemed to go into some
infinite loop, with CPU usage at 100%. I let it run for 5 minutes, but
nothing happened and I had to kill the process.
The card works fine in at least 3 different models of cameras.
Pierre

Smaller USB drives - 2Gb or less - get treated as a "large floppy" drive
and assigned the next free Drive letter but a larger drive needs to be
made into a Volume before OS/2 can use it.

Regards

Pete

[Ilya Zakharevich]

Post by Peter Brown
Smaller USB drives - 2Gb or less - get treated as a "large floppy" drive
and assigned the next free Drive letter but a larger drive needs to be
made into a Volume before OS/2 can use it.

Are you sure? I would think the difference is only in the presence of
the partition table, not in the size...

Yours,
Ilya

[Peter Brown]

Hi Ilya

Post by Ilya Zakharevich

Post by Peter Brown
Smaller USB drives - 2Gb or less - get treated as a "large floppy" drive
and assigned the next free Drive letter but a larger drive needs to be
made into a Volume before OS/2 can use it.

Are you sure? I would think the difference is only in the presence of
the partition table, not in the size...
Yours,
Ilya

That has been my experience on several eCS systems here.

Regards

Pete

[Pierre Jelenc]

Post by Peter Brown
Smaller USB drives - 2Gb or less - get treated as a "large floppy" drive
and assigned the next free Drive letter but a larger drive needs to be
made into a Volume before OS/2 can use it.

Can that be done without screwing it up for everything else? That USB card
needs to work in one of several cameras, as well as a Windows (Vista I
believe) and Mac (fairly recent OS X whatever) computer.

Pierre

[James J. Weinkam]

Post by Pierre Jelenc

Post by Peter Brown
Smaller USB drives - 2Gb or less - get treated as a "large floppy" drive
and assigned the next free Drive letter but a larger drive needs to be
made into a Volume before OS/2 can use it.

Can that be done without screwing it up for everything else? That USB card
needs to work in one of several cameras, as well as a Windows (Vista I
believe) and Mac (fairly recent OS X whatever) computer.
Pierre

My experience with cards >2GB is that if you don't add LVM information,
OS/2/eCS refuses to operate the drive. I have never seen adding LVM
information cause a problem for any camera or for any version of Windows. I
always use DFSee to add the lvm information. Sometimes a chkdsk is also
necessary.

After copying my pictures, I usually delete them from the card. This also does
not cause any problems in the camera.

[Alex Taylor]

On Thu, 22 Apr 2010 15:21:45 UTC, Peter Brown

Post by Peter Brown

Post by Alex Taylor
Now, I usually use Cameraderie in PTP mode to get the pictures off it.
But I've discovered that it won't read the new memory stick, perhaps
because it's larger than 2GB (?)...
The first time I tried it, it just said it couldn't read the device.
I tried again today to check the exact message, but now whenever I
open Cameraderie with the camera plugged in, the system instantly
traps.
I also tried switching over to USB-MSD mode, but that doesn't work
either because of the size of the device.

With regard to "USB-MSD mode": Did you make the 8GB memory stick into a
Volume using LVM before trying to access it?

No. I know that would probably work, but I don't want to lose all the
pictures that are already on the card.

My question was really about getting PTP mode to work.

[Paul Smedley]

Hi Alex,

On Fri, 23 Apr 2010 09:47:01 UTC, "Alex Taylor"

Post by Alex Taylor
On Thu, 22 Apr 2010 15:21:45 UTC, Peter Brown

Post by Peter Brown

Post by Alex Taylor
Now, I usually use Cameraderie in PTP mode to get the pictures off it.
But I've discovered that it won't read the new memory stick, perhaps
because it's larger than 2GB (?)...
The first time I tried it, it just said it couldn't read the device.
I tried again today to check the exact message, but now whenever I
open Cameraderie with the camera plugged in, the system instantly
traps.
I also tried switching over to USB-MSD mode, but that doesn't work
either because of the size of the device.

With regard to "USB-MSD mode": Did you make the 8GB memory stick into a
Volume using LVM before trying to access it?

No. I know that would probably work, but I don't want to lose all the
pictures that are already on the card.
My question was really about getting PTP mode to work.

I use PTP mode with our Nikon D80 with 16gb SHDC card and it works
fine.

However, with my Nokia N97 that has 32gb built in, Cameraderie
fails...

[Pete]

On Sat, 24 Apr 2010 09:50:53 UTC, "Paul Smedley"

Post by Paul Smedley
Hi Alex,
On Fri, 23 Apr 2010 09:47:01 UTC, "Alex Taylor"

Post by Alex Taylor
On Thu, 22 Apr 2010 15:21:45 UTC, Peter Brown

Post by Alex Taylor
Now, I usually use Cameraderie in PTP mode to get the pictures off it.
But I've discovered that it won't read the new memory stick, perhaps
because it's larger than 2GB (?)...

If the card has been formatted with exFAT, OS/2-eCS won't be able to read it,
period (DFSee will report "large floppy" and tell you the same thing). Unlike
FAT32, there's no exFAT file system driver for OS/2.

Pete

--

[Alex Taylor]

Post by Pete

Post by Alex Taylor
Now, I usually use Cameraderie in PTP mode to get the pictures off it.
But I've discovered that it won't read the new memory stick, perhaps
because it's larger than 2GB (?)...

If the card has been formatted with exFAT, OS/2-eCS won't be able to read
it, period (DFSee will report "large floppy" and tell you the same thing).

Fortunately that wasn't the case with that particular memory card - IIRC,
I eventually got it to work under eCS 2.0 GA (where it never worked under
the earlier version I'd been trying). Probably an updated USB driver or
storage was responsible.

OTOH, I haven't gotten my Android phone and its 32GB SD card to be
recognized, but then I haven't dug into it very much. (It helps that
I can actually FTP to the phone to get files, if I need to.)

[Peter Brown]

Hi All

Post by Pete
On Sat, 24 Apr 2010 09:50:53 UTC, "Paul Smedley"

Post by Paul Smedley
Hi Alex,
On Fri, 23 Apr 2010 09:47:01 UTC, "Alex Taylor"

Post by Alex Taylor
On Thu, 22 Apr 2010 15:21:45 UTC, Peter Brown

Post by Alex Taylor
Now, I usually use Cameraderie in PTP mode to get the pictures off it.
But I've discovered that it won't read the new memory stick, perhaps
because it's larger than 2GB (?)...

Something wrong there as I never posted the above and do not use
Cameraderie at all.


Regards

Pete

Post by Pete
If the card has been formatted with exFAT, OS/2-eCS won't be able to read it,
period (DFSee will report "large floppy" and tell you the same thing). Unlike
FAT32, there's no exFAT file system driver for OS/2.
Pete

[Dariusz Piatkowski]

Hi Alex!

Post by Alex Taylor
I recently got a new 8GB memory stick for my digital camera.
Now, I usually use Cameraderie in PTP mode to get the pictures off it.
But I've discovered that it won't read the new memory stick, perhaps
because it's larger than 2GB (?)...

...snip...

Post by Alex Taylor
Does anyone have experience with getting pictures off a camera with a
very large memory stick?

Using a 16 Gig SDHC card here with my Pentax K5. It is defined as a LVM
recognized volume and formatted as a FAT32 FS. This is good enough...the change
that made it work was the fact that I assigned a volume letter to the partition
(as best as I can remember). Not sure if I had LVM create the actual partition
itself though...I remember worrying a little bit about whether the camera was
going to complain that there is an unformatted SDHC card in there and so on.

This combination works fine for me, only problem is, I can not create a file
(really just MJPG) that's larger then the 2Gig limit...

[James J. Weinkam]

Post by Dariusz Piatkowski
Hi Alex!

Post by Alex Taylor
I recently got a new 8GB memory stick for my digital camera.
Now, I usually use Cameraderie in PTP mode to get the pictures off it.
But I've discovered that it won't read the new memory stick, perhaps
because it's larger than 2GB (?)...

...snip...

Post by Alex Taylor
Does anyone have experience with getting pictures off a camera with a
very large memory stick?

Using a 16 Gig SDHC card here with my Pentax K5. It is defined as a LVM
recognized volume and formatted as a FAT32 FS. This is good enough...the change
that made it work was the fact that I assigned a volume letter to the partition
(as best as I can remember).

In general, removable media larger than 2GB needs to have LVM information in order to be accessed by OS/2 or eCS. DFSee
can add the LVM information without the need to recreate the partition. It is sometimes also necessary to fix the hidden
sectors information and possibly run chkdsk before the device can be accessed. Most cameras, GPSs and recording devices
that use such memory cards do not get upset with either the LVM information or other files that you may add to the
memory card. However there are some that do refuse to work if they think the card has been tampered with.

Not sure if I had LVM create the actual partition

Post by Dariusz Piatkowski
itself though...I remember worrying a little bit about whether the camera was
going to complain that there is an unformatted SDHC card in there and so on.
This combination works fine for me, only problem is, I can not create a file
(really just MJPG) that's larger then the 2Gig limit...

That is a limitation of the FAT32 file system. I believe the "official" limit is 2GB less 1 byte. However, despite this
"limitation" some camera firmware and some versions of windows will actually process files up to 4GB. If I put a big
enough card in it, my Canon S5 camera will make a movie a bit over 30 minutes duration which generates a 4GB .avi file.
eCS displays the correct size but will only process the first 2GB. Windows XP displays an incorrect size but will
process the whole file. Go figure.

[Allan]

Post by James J. Weinkam

Post by Dariusz Piatkowski
This combination works fine for me, only problem is, I can not create a file
(really just MJPG) that's larger then the 2Gig limit...

That is a limitation of the FAT32 file system. I believe the "official" limit is 2GB less 1 byte. However, despite this
"limitation" some camera firmware and some versions of windows will actually process files up to 4GB. If I put a big
enough card in it, my Canon S5 camera will make a movie a bit over 30 minutes duration which generates a 4GB .avi file.
eCS displays the correct size but will only process the first 2GB. Windows XP displays an incorrect size but will
process the whole file. Go figure.

The FAT32 IFS driver have never been updated to include the 'new' L API's
that are needed to access files larger than 2GB.

The driver is still Open Source, so you just need to find a developer,
that has the time to do the job :-)

[Alex Taylor]

On Tue, 3 Apr 2012 17:20:25 UTC, "Dariusz Piatkowski"

Post by Dariusz Piatkowski
Hi Alex!

--snip--

Appreciate the response, but is there any particular reason why people
are suddenly replying to my two-year-old messages?

[James J. Weinkam]

Post by Alex Taylor
On Tue, 3 Apr 2012 17:20:25 UTC, "Dariusz Piatkowski"

Post by Dariusz Piatkowski
Hi Alex!

--snip--
Appreciate the response, but is there any particular reason why people
are suddenly replying to my two-year-old messages?

Well, I replied to Dariusz's message dated 2012/04/03. Didn't notice the your message he was replying to was two years old.

As to that problem, I think some news servers must have bugs that sometimes cause ancient messages to resurface. On
several occasions I have had a sense of deja vu and looked at the message date only to see that an old message had
reappeared. Another possibility in this case, given the time of year, is some sort of April Fool joke.

[Dariusz Piatkowski]

Post by James J. Weinkam

Post by Alex Taylor
On Tue, 3 Apr 2012 17:20:25 UTC, "Dariusz Piatkowski"

Post by Dariusz Piatkowski
Hi Alex!

--snip--
Appreciate the response, but is there any particular reason why people
are suddenly replying to my two-year-old messages?

Well, I replied to Dariusz's message dated 2012/04/03. Didn't notice the your message he was replying to was two years old.
As to that problem, I think some news servers must have bugs that sometimes cause ancient messages to resurface. On
several occasions I have had a sense of deja vu and looked at the message date only to see that an old message had
reappeared. Another possibility in this case, given the time of year, is some sort of April Fool joke.

Oh...wow you guys...LOL...I had no idea...for whatever reason my newserver
flaged that as a NEW message and given the tiny community we 'live in' I always
try to respond to the posts with whatever information I have that may help.

Again...my appologies for brining this back to life...well, hopefully someone
else out there can make use of it.

[Allan]

Post by Dariusz Piatkowski
Oh...wow you guys...LOL...I had no idea...for whatever reason my newserver
flaged that as a NEW message and given the tiny community we 'live in' I always
try to respond to the posts with whatever information I have that may help.

It is not the news-SERVER that create that flag, that is your news-CLIENT :-)

Anyway, yes, that is a long standing bug in Pronews, that I have seen from
time to time too. I'm sorry that I haven't (yet) sent a bug report to the developer(s)
about it - I should have done years ago.

Until fixed, watch out for the time stamp on 'New' msgs - _especially_ if these
pop up in the middle of a thread.

[Alex Taylor]

On Tue, 10 Apr 2012 15:05:30 UTC, "Dariusz Piatkowski"

Post by Dariusz Piatkowski

Post by Alex Taylor
Appreciate the response, but is there any particular reason why people
are suddenly replying to my two-year-old messages?

Oh...wow you guys...LOL...I had no idea...for whatever reason my newserver
flaged that as a NEW message and given the tiny community we 'live in' I
always try to respond to the posts with whatever information I have that
may help.
Again...my appologies for brining this back to life...well, hopefully
someone else out there can make use of it.

No problem, it's nice that people respond!

[b***@mccullough.ca]

Post by Alex Taylor
I recently got a new 8GB memory stick for my digital camera.
Now, I usually use Cameraderie in PTP mode to get the pictures off it.
But I've discovered that it won't read the new memory stick, perhaps
because it's larger than 2GB (?)...
The first time I tried it, it just said it couldn't read the device.
I tried again today to check the exact message, but now whenever I open
Cameraderie with the camera plugged in, the system instantly traps.
(The trapdump is corrupted so I unfortunately can't get the trap screen
data.)
I also tried switching over to USB-MSD mode, but that doesn't work
either because of the size of the device. (It doesn't work under
Win2K either, for what it's worth, although it does work under XP.)
Does anyone have experience with getting pictures off a camera with a
very large memory stick?
--
Alex Taylor
Fukushima, Japan
http://www.socis.ca/~ataylo00
Please take off hat when replying.

Does anyone know if the media in a camera using PTP needs to be volumized?

[Rich Walsh]

Post by b***@mccullough.ca
Does anyone know if the media in a camera using PTP needs to be volumized?

Do you mean create a partition table, etc, etc? I haven't tried but
it sounds like a good way to make a memory card incompatible with your
camera. The original spec for PTP envisioned the card as a gigantic
FAT-16 floppy. Newer cameras use FAT-32 but AFAIK, they're still
giant floppies.

[James J. Weinkam]

Post by Rich Walsh

Post by b***@mccullough.ca
Does anyone know if the media in a camera using PTP needs to be volumized?

Do you mean create a partition table, etc, etc? I haven't tried but
it sounds like a good way to make a memory card incompatible with your
camera. The original spec for PTP envisioned the card as a gigantic
FAT-16 floppy. Newer cameras use FAT-32 but AFAIK, they're still
giant floppies.

I think that by "volumized" the OP means adding LVM information to the memory card using either LVM or DFSee.

As I understand it, I believe that the answer to the OP's question is no, because software that communicates with the
camera using PTP does not make the memory card in the camera visible to the operating system as a drive. Rather the PTP
aware software such as Cameraderie sends PTP commands to the camera which in turn sends information from the memory card
to the program. The program can then store that information in files on drives within the system it is running on.

In contrast, if the memory card is removed from the camera and inserted into a usb card reader/writer or into a suitable
slot on the computer, the card is mounted as a drive and standard operating system commands and/or api calls may be used
to do anything the user cares to with the files on the card just as with any other files on any other drive within the
system. For this to work, cards with over 2GB capacity must have LVM information in a LVM system.

I have a Canon Powershot S5IS camera and a Zoom H4n Audio recorder. I also have three SDHC cards at hand: a 32GB card
formatted in the camera and 2 8GB cards one formatted by DFSee and the other in the Zoom. All are using the FAT32 file
system and have LVM information identifying them as drive V. Needless to say at most one of them can be mounted in eCS
at any given moment. The 32GB card has 14GB of other files on it unrelated to either the camera or the audio recorder. I
can insert any of the cards into either device and they work fine. Both devices simply ignore any information outside
the directory structure they create. Neither the camera nor the Zoom objects to or disturbs in any way the other data on
the card. Neither objects to me deleting files it created after I have transferred them elsewhere. Neither objects if I
delete the directories they have created, they simply recreate them if I reinsert the card. I have not investigated what
happens if for example I would put a .png file in the directory where the Canon camera normally puts the jpg files it
creates. It is conceivable that this would confuse the camera. Someday when I have nothing else to do I will give it a
try and see what happens. My experience had been that nothing bad happens if you don't do anything that is really foolish.

[b***@mccullough.ca]

Post by James J. Weinkam

Post by Rich Walsh

Post by b***@mccullough.ca
Does anyone know if the media in a camera using PTP needs to be volumized?

Do you mean create a partition table, etc, etc? I haven't tried but
it sounds like a good way to make a memory card incompatible with your
camera. The original spec for PTP envisioned the card as a gigantic
FAT-16 floppy. Newer cameras use FAT-32 but AFAIK, they're still
giant floppies.

I think that by "volumized" the OP means adding LVM information to the memory card using either LVM or DFSee.
As I understand it, I believe that the answer to the OP's question is no, because software that communicates with the
camera using PTP does not make the memory card in the camera visible to the operating system as a drive. Rather the PTP
aware software such as Cameraderie sends PTP commands to the camera which in turn sends information from the memory card
to the program. The program can then store that information in files on drives within the system it is running on.
In contrast, if the memory card is removed from the camera and inserted into a usb card reader/writer or into a suitable
slot on the computer, the card is mounted as a drive and standard operating system commands and/or api calls may be used
to do anything the user cares to with the files on the card just as with any other files on any other drive within the
system. For this to work, cards with over 2GB capacity must have LVM information in a LVM system.
I have a Canon Powershot S5IS camera and a Zoom H4n Audio recorder. I also have three SDHC cards at hand: a 32GB card
formatted in the camera and 2 8GB cards one formatted by DFSee and the other in the Zoom. All are using the FAT32 file
system and have LVM information identifying them as drive V. Needless to say at most one of them can be mounted in eCS
at any given moment. The 32GB card has 14GB of other files on it unrelated to either the camera or the audio recorder. I
can insert any of the cards into either device and they work fine. Both devices simply ignore any information outside
the directory structure they create. Neither the camera nor the Zoom objects to or disturbs in any way the other data on
the card. Neither objects to me deleting files it created after I have transferred them elsewhere. Neither objects if I
delete the directories they have created, they simply recreate them if I reinsert the card. I have not investigated what
happens if for example I would put a .png file in the directory where the Canon camera normally puts the jpg files it
creates. It is conceivable that this would confuse the camera. Someday when I have nothing else to do I will give it a
try and see what happens. My experience had been that nothing bad happens if you don't do anything that is really foolish.

Yes that is what I meant to ask. Thank you for the detailed response.

[b***@mccullough.ca]

Post by Rich Walsh

Post by b***@mccullough.ca
Does anyone know if the media in a camera using PTP needs to be volumized?

Do you mean create a partition table, etc, etc? I haven't tried but
it sounds like a good way to make a memory card incompatible with your
camera. The original spec for PTP envisioned the card as a gigantic
FAT-16 floppy. Newer cameras use FAT-32 but AFAIK, they're still
giant floppies.
--
== == almost usable email address: Rich AT E-vertise DOT Com == ==

Rich, this question was a follow-on to the email I sent you. I am just trying to find some way of making this work. Thanks.