#pc card manager

[synchrotech]

As a general rule, Linear Flash is erased, rather than "formatted."

As a general rule, Linear Flash is erased, rather than "formatted." While there are ways to emulate file systems like DOS on these cards, they are rarely deployed that way.

These instructions should ensure that everything is installed correctly.

Near the end of the tutorial it discusses the blank check feature. To erase, rather than clicking that button, you would click "Erase" to erase the card. (see Image A above).

Quick Start: Erasing Linear Flash PC Cards using the OmniDrive LF

In PC Card Manager choose the menu item:

Actions -> Linear FLASH Utilities

Click the "Erase" button.

Honeywell Cards

However, if you're trying to copy a Honeywell supplied binary to the card, you should follow these instructions instructions instead.

Choose both the "Erase (linear) FLASH before writing" and the "Write with verify" checkboxes under "Options" prior to clicking "Copy" (see Image B above).

[synchrotech]

Replacements to overcome MCE's 4GB limit

We recently had a customer notify us that they were experiencing issues using Memory Card Explorer (MCE) to copy binary images to larger CompactFlash (CF) cards. In this note we confirm there appears to be a 4GB threshold in MCE, remind everyone about MCE's EOL status, and provide two viable alternatives.

MCE's Apparent 4GB limit

Our test CF cards consisted of an 8GB ATP, and a 16GB FMJ. Neither appear in MCE displaying their correct capacities. (images 1 and 2). We decided to try copying binaries at the appropriate size to the cards, despite the misidentification.

In order to reproduce the common workflow where binaries are obtained from another source, we populated the CF cards with files, and then generated a binary file of each under a Unix-like system (Xubuntu). Moving those large files to Windows proved interesting. FAT (i.e. FAT32) doesn't accommodate 8GB and 16GB file sizes. So we created an exFAT volume under Xubuntu. Our test system runs The Windows XP, which apparently doesn't do exFAT. This meant reformatting the drive as NTFS and mounting on Xubuntu using FUSE.

MCE would immediately throw and error when we tried to copy the binaries to the CF cards. It would seem that MCE shares FAT32's 4GB ceiling.

MCE's End of Life (EOL) Status

It's been six years since Elan Digital Systems Ltd. was placed into liquidation. As our 2012 public notification states:

> MCE is an End Of Life product (discontinued).

Since MCE was a proprietary, closed source product, there is no chance for it being revived or updated.

Viable Alternatives

The good news for The Windows users is that CSM's OmniDrives/PC Card Manager software are able to handle modern CF capacities. We used an OMNIDriveUSB2 LF and its associated PC Card Manager (PCM). PCM displayed the CF cards' correct capacities. (images 3 and 4) It also allowed us to copy the Xumbutu generated binaries to the cards. Lastly, it allowed us to create binaries from the cards under The Windows.

Users with access to Unix-like systems can generally use the dd command to accomplish the same results when working with CF or other ATA complaint media cards.