UKC

So at uni we have some digital oscilloscope's and on them they have an SD card slot for taking screenshots. According to my lecturer they use an old standard or one of the older standards. I think they are SDSC standard. They dont make them or the uni is not interested in getting some.

Ive not asked him about getting some but do any of the photographers have any old SD cards they would consider dontating? I have an old 64 Mb SDSC card which i will check with on monday to see if it works. Would anyone consider donation old SD cards that fit the bill. We may be able to put them to use.

Thanks and any feedback is welcome.

In reply to itsThere:

I've got quite a few old SD cards, message me your address and I'll dig some out and send them to you.

That said, modern SD cards should be backwards compatible, the only thing is that the oscilloscope might not recognise the full capacity.

In reply to Richard Carter: old cards work in the newer things but new cards dont work in old i think. my phone only takes old micro-sd cards. but i will have a go anyway. i think because of the extra memory they assume there is a fault and do nothing.

thanks and you have mail

In reply to itsThere: my lecturer did say they didnt work with the new sd cards.

In reply to itsThere:

Well I've only tried it with cameras, but I have 2 late 90's digital cameras and they work even with SDXC cards.

The cards I have are old 1GB ones, are they what you're after?

In reply to Richard Carter: maybe but i will double check on monday which type of sd card they need. i assumed it was the oldest type.

In reply to itsThere: i can post you a 32meg card that came with my g9

In reply to itsThere:


What's the point of all this? Are these scopes being used for your course? Or have you been offered one for your own use because the University considers them scrap?


'not interested'? See my question above.


I think it would help if you could clarify the objective. What do you need these cards for?

In addition: don't (necessarily) take anything your lecturer says about card compatability at face value: he/she might be trying his/her best, but he/she might not know the full story. What's the exact manufacturer and model of the scopes?

In reply to abcdefg: What's the point of all this? Are these scopes being >used for your course? Or have you been offered one for your own use >because the University considers them scrap?

They are being used for my course(and others) and we often have to take down what is on the scope. I will be using one sometime soon for my thesis.

>'not interested'? See my question above.

He said they were an old spec and he didnt know where to get the cards from, since they dont make them anymore.

>I think it would help if you could clarify the objective. What do you >need these cards for?

The objective is to get data off the scopes with the SD card, we may be able to use them to store the plot of the data or a picture of the screen. Ive not looked into it and will do. For example last week we were looking at the signal from a DMX-512 sender.

>In addition: don't (necessarily) take anything your lecturer says about >card compatability at face value: he/she might be trying his/her best, >but he/she might not know the full story. What's the exact manufacturer >and model of the scopes?

I dont know the make model, i didnt expect to get many offers and since there are not that many standards of SD cards(wiki) i thought it would be easy to just ask for old (SDsc) cards.

At some point i will be using one for my thesis and on monday i will see if my old SD card is compatible. Other students will be able to put them to use. I will also find out the make and model.

In reply to itsThere:
I've just tried an SDHC and an SDXC in a camera that was released before either standard existed, and both worked fine. The physical form factor is the same, so I've be inclined to try *anything* in there, rather than specifically looking for a particular specification.

I'm sure you / friends / lab colleagues will have digital cameras with SD cards to use as a sample set.

In reply to haydn: not lecture till thur because he is busy so i will check then. thanks

so its a gw instek gos 1022 and it will use SD cards of 2GB or less, i think you can use usb but its more complicated than just saving the waveform to an SD card.

http://www.gwinstek.com/en/product/productdetail.aspx?pid=3&mid=7&i...

In reply to itsThere:

2gb for £2.90 posted. Why not just buy one or two?

In reply to A Game of Chance:

That's on Amazon by the way

In reply to A Game of Chance: because we can recycle the old cards that are prob not being put to use or thats what i was thinking. a 2GB will hold way more data than we could need, a 128or64MB one can be put to use again.

In reply to itsThere:

My guess would be your scope uses cards with a FAT16 file system instead of the more modern FAT32. You could partition FAT32 cards down to 2GB (+ remainder) and then reformat the 2GB active partition to FAT16.

In reply to haydn:

Yes, but when I had an SDHC card (now sold with the camera it was for), the standard cheap multi-card readers (the ones that are about £4 at 7dayshop etc) could not recognise them, I had to get a dedicated SDHC reader. It seems that old cameras cope better than some read-write devices, and I would hazard that the oscilloscopes might behave more like a read-write device than an old camera. Still worth a try of course!

NB my Kodak DC-120 digital camera from 1997 surprisingly accepted a modern (ish) 2Gb CF card, not bad considering that CF cards themselves were an obscure novelty back in 1997, costing £90 for 2Mb. Yes, 2Mb...