HyMinded... very interesting. That's EXACTLY the same card reader I have. I can only assume I'm inserting the reader properly, as it works just fine for the SM cards. I know I'm inserting the SD card into the reader properly, because I can read the cards fine in my laptop. Strange. Very strange! Do you know if your SD cards are formatted as FAT or FAT32?

 

I don't know, but I didn't reformat the card at all so whatever the default is... I copied my MP3s to a folder and dragged the folder to the SD card. Weird.

 

My card reader saga continues. To refresh your memory, I have a SanDisk 6-in-1 reader, and I've attempted to use SD cards of various sizes with no joy. Pop the card in and nothing happens. Close the screen and click on the card icon, still nothing. I can get it to read an old 128mb Smart Media card just fine, and the SD cards read fine off the same 6-in-1 reader from my laptop. Strange.

This evening, I collected ALL of my SD cards... all SEVEN of 'em! I formatted them all in FAT32, and put two songs in the root directory of each. Went out to the car and began testing. Strangely enough, I was able to get TWO working. One was a 16mb multimedia card which came with some camera. 16mb... how incredibly useless!!! The other one was a greater success... a 256mb Panasonic SD card (came as a rebate for yet another camera!). The ones which DON'T work are: Two kingston 128mb SD's, a SanDisk 256 SD, a 512 SanDisk SD and a 1GB Pretec SD (whatever a "pretec" is!!!). Does anyone have a clue as to why this is happening? Why is the radio so particular regarding the type of SD card it accepts? Is there some special format I should try?

256mb is better than nothing, but I'd really like to get the 512 or 1GB card working.
Standard formats are FAT and FAT32... but I have some fancy programs which can lay down different / custom formats. Any hints on what might work would be greatly appreciated! Thanx!

 

Well, I THOUGHT the 256MB card was working! It does play, but NAV system freezes up. It stays on the splash screen (the Honda logo) forever... no maps, no audio display, and no audio controls. This only frees up if you remove the SD card. Weird!!!

 

Here's a guess. Different cards have different interface speeds. The HCH's interface may be limited in the speeds it can handle.

I've ordered a 2GB SD card for my Palm TX. I can use the TX like an ipod through the aux input, but I'll also try the SD card directly in the card reader and see what happens.

 

Believe it or not, it may be the San Disk 6 in 1 reader. Have you tryed a different card reader? If not try a generic one, that may very well be your problem.

 

I use a SanDisk 6-in-1 PC adaptor and a SanDisk 2GB SanDisk MiniSD chip. I have 627 songs on it in WMA format using it as a mobile hard drive on my laptop computer. All of the songs from my personal CD’s play, but the protected songs I purchased and downloaded show a “file error” when I try to play them. The random mode plays all of the songs in the same sequence each time unless I switch back and forth on the random button a few times.

 

I just LOVE my card reader!

Sorry to hear of your problem. I don't really have any idea what the cause might be but, I'll tell what works for me. I'm using a SanDisk CF to PCMCIA Adapter and a 2GB SanDisk CF card. I've got 32 folders and 633 songs in WMA format ,so far. I can't imagine needing much more space, considering the fact that in this format you're able to easily change which songs are on the card at any time.

My only tip, and I know it's not the answer to your specific problem, is to Keep It Simple Stupid, when choosing your media options. If you only intend to use 1 type of media (like I do, and you should), buy a card or card/adapter combination that is as basic/simple as possible. One that has the best fit, best connection, and the least probability of screwing up. In my mind, the order of preference should be:

1. Stand alone PCMCIA card: Best choice, but it's cost prohibitive and most desktop PCs don't have a PCMCIA card reader.
2. PCMCIA to CF card adapter and CF card: Simple and cheap adapter with a nice simple connection. The cards are reasonably priced and also common to many digital cameras and printers. Many newer desktop PCs have CF card readers.
3. Any other cards that are more removed from the intended PCMCIA format.

As to the question about the possible USB interface, as the previous poster pointed out, the head unit wouldn't be able to close with the connector in place.

 

Utah: could you please post the model of pcmcia card and 4 GB CF card you are using ? Are they both SanDisk ? Thanks !

 

I'm not Utah but ---- after trial & error the unit that worked for me was the SanDisk CF adapter (purchased at Circuit City) and a 2 gb CF card from fry's (PQI brand). (Something I didn't understand at first is that these pcmcia adapters are the ones used in notebook computers - I had several employees at various stores look at me blankly when I tried to explain to them about my civic pcmcia slot).

I tried CompUSA's 5 in 1 with an SD card - this worked only intermittently (and mostly didn't work). Kept getting "Card Media Error" message; then suddenly it would just work - no rhyme or reason.

Re 4 gb card - my 2 gb card has 850 songs on it. I believe I read in the manual that the track list only can "read" (list) 999 songs. If you have your songs in folders than you don't have to worry about this so much since you can view folders/artists but if you just dump the songs then ......