Hello I have a Sharp Zaurus and I just found out that the reason why it does not detect my SD card is because it is a Fat32 card and that I have to format it to Fat16 in order for the sharp Zaurus to detect it.

How can I format the card using SUSE 9.3??

What firmware are you using? I had no problems with reading my SD cards on the Zaurus. You could also format the card EXT2/3 as well, again, depending on your firmware.

To force FAT16, you would do something like:

Replacing the device with that of your SD card reader, if necessary.

Yeah, I'm thinking it shouldn't have problems reading Fat32 either. You sure you got it set up right?

I've always formated my cards directly inside my Zaurus. (except I use ext3)PS.
I've had the ext3 filesystem destroy 2 of my SD cards before. I remember one of them was a Kingston. They were both ruined within a matter of weeks. I'm now using a Lexar, and it's still good after about 3 years.

Well I dont exactly know what firmware I have. The SD card I tried using is a generic 2GB card manufactured by "Silicon Power" that worked fine on a Palm TX.

my Zaurus is fresh out of the box and is brand new, I have not made any modifications on it at all.

I think what I am going to do is purchase a smaller Lexar SD card and try out what you guys recommended I do.


By any chance do you know how to sync The sharp Zaurus SL5600 using the USB cradle and Qtopia desktop on SUSE 9.3.?

I have tried following directions made for SUSE 9.1/9.2 but cant get my zaurus to communicate.

Any ideas??

thanks for your help.

I will keep you posted as to what happens with the card.

So then you are using the default Sharp ROM, rather than something like Open Zaurus.

Consequently, I have no experience with the original Sharp ROM, since I removed it as soon as I got my Zaurus.

type in a terminal (my fav is eterm)
dmesg
your terminal will flow w/info of lots of repeating line

i found
sdc: sdc1

close to 7 lines from the very bottom
this is my card.
if i type df -h, i get a different report, and didn't want to chance it.

heres some screenshots
if you need terminal only shots, please email me...my username (no spaces) @ gmail

steps (do not type #, as "#" is the begining of the line.
1. # fdisk /dev/sdc
the command is right below the highlight...
please disregard the terms in the right.
the highlight is to show you..be root...su
http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e1...dcandlogge.jpg


2 in fdisk
if you type
p
you will see the dev/sbc1
after you type in fdisk

d
and then
p
you see this...(its gone...unless you have more than 1 filesystem on the SDCARD.
the report is above the highlight...shows the dev, nothing under it.

http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e1...hhighlight.jpg


i always hit p after every command to ensure its flowing right.
p= print label, or file(s) or partitions in fdisk...


back to it.

3 or 4...
n
to create a new partition

http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e1...hhighlight.jpg


5. we make the type/ change (notice i made 2 filesystems. only 1 is nec).. you can see it change from both being linux to 1 becoming fat32
t
use the
c
command to make it fat32 if you use
i
it will become fat12 (oops..i did it there somewhere),.so "c" is the correct answer...

http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e1...skcomplete.jpg


almost there.

press
w
this writes and quites (may need to do it twice)


lets make the filesystem formatted now
6.
# mkfs.vfat /dev/sdc1

your done...

a visual reference.

1
http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e1...l1g1sdcard.png

2
notice the very last letters "sdc1" those are important.
http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e1...esgreports.png

after this...just type "clear" to get a clean term and i;m logging into root or su

3
http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e1...oginasroot.jpg




4

http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e1...ttypefdisk.jpg


5
i deleted 5
6
http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e1...snexttypep.jpg

7

http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e1...l7pinfdisk.jpg

8

http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e1...nsnothingw.jpg

9 >> i didn't need to delete this, but do anyways

http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e1...theressome.jpg

10 >> reports a good thing, as there was nothing to delete
http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e1...l10nfornew.jpg

11 now lets type "n" and get a new filesystem on it
http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e1...nal11typep.jpg

12
here, we can choose letters in FDISK that are special (hence the position of the "p" it can also be "e" if i chose that too).

i than typed 1 , than another 1, then 1012 for the whole space being used.

http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e1...lastcylend.jpg

13
type p again, and we see the print of what can be written ... than i chose t
http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e1...trofftofor.jpg

14
i chose t for the file type, and than could select a list of types (its huge, but i knew i needed c )...type 1 for the file, than c for the type, than i printed it out again for reference on whats going on...
http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e1...otreportfa.jpg
14.5
you can see the type changed from native linux to vfat 32 here (not written yet)
http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e1...surechange.jpg

15
type w
http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e1...adytowrite.jpg

15.5
its writing now...under progress.. no status present, just wait
http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e1...inprogress.jpg


16
write complete
http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e1...edandrooti.jpg


we can stop here.
the card is set up for a windows system now. or. we can format it to windows , notice the "command (w for help)" is gone..this means that FDISK is closed.
ignore the warning...this wrote what we needed

to go further...


you now have options.
insert the SDCARD into your phone, and have your phone format it (preferred)
or
do the fallowing steps
17
http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e1...vfatstilli.jpg

18

http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e1...necomplete.jpg

I had almost the opposite problem with my Zaurus a few months ago when I was visiting my brother. The SD card I was using (I believe it was Fat32) worked perfectly in the Zaurus, but when I wanted to transfer some files to it from a Windows machine, XP refused to recognize the card. So I backed up its contents onto the CF card, then used Windows to reformat it into fat16. Now it works fine on both systems.

By the way, I think ext2 is probably better than ext3 for flash media cards. It's a bit of overkill to use a journaling system on a small, removable drive.