Old Electronics stuff

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With all of the members and readers we have here, I thought I might inquire about something. A while back, my job revoked our permission to use a laptop or dvd player while working. We still have permission to read during down periods and on break. Being hard headed, and very cheap, I decided to do it the hard way. I located and purchased a like new IPAQ 1910, from back in 2002. I figured for 40.00 it would make things easier for me, and my buddy could buy a tank of gas. He gave me a 64 Mb card with it. I figured I could electronically store a gazillion stories and books and basically carry my library around in my pocket. Now for the hard part. Back in those dinosaur days SD Cards were still very small and expensive. Today they are huge. I have seen them at 32 gigs for less than I paid for my 8 gig flash drive. My real problem is this. My old toy chokes and gags if I try to use even a one gig card. Have you tried to buy a small capacity SD card recently? The only ones I can find at all are on Ebay, and located in China, and I could buy a new 8 gig High Cap card for what they want for postage on a 3.00 or less purchase. So, on bent knee I inquire here. Does anyone out there have a 512Mb or even smaller standard SD card they might care to be rid of for a reasonable cost? Thanks in advance. Erin, if this is out of line, feel free to delete it.

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The limit on that one is

The limit on that one is SDHC. You can't use them. You can only use standard SD.

Unfortunately, 2 gig is the standard smallest size available. i might have a 64 around somewhere, however

I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.

I thought

I had an old 16Mg card around here from an old Kodak digital camera a friend gave me, but after looking, I remember my nephew told me he let his kids use the borrowed camera and they lost the card while using it. 64 sounds very interesting if you have not disposed of it, due to its age. Just because we are old, doesn't mean we are not handy to have around.

Try geeks.com or

Try geeks.com or tigerdirect.com

http://www.geeks.com/products_sc.asp?cat=380

They have some 2GB SD cards for $6.76 !

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/category/category_sl...|c:380|&Sort=4

They have 2GB SD cards starting at $5.99 and 4GB microSD cards with a SD adapter for $6.99.

You got to love old tech the price is so amazing, if you can find it.

This tech

is so old, it just does not recognize the new stuff, due to formatting I would guess. I tried to use a 1 gig card and it just choked on it, much less a larger capacity. I would be afraid to try to use a micro-sd card in an adapter, it may try to throw it back at me or even just down, in pain.

SD cards

When I bought my Palm M505 in 2001, it came with a free 16Mb (yes, that's right!) card, which I still have. It has some 65-70 ebooks on it, still plenty of space. It's yours free if you're interested.

The Palm is still going strong with a 1Gb card in it. I still use it nearly every night and it only needs charging weekly. Would that one could say the same about some modern gadgets.

Penny

I bought

this specifically cause the screen is backlit, unlike the E readers of today, and it was much cheaper. I am not sure about battery life, since it is so old, but I have to charge it before I go to work, and after a shift, and I carry the wire to work in case. I intend to locate a new battery, (I hope they are still made) and have a spare that way.. I like this thing as a reader because of the back lit screen, and I don't have to worry about some format that is not recognized by all. It does just fine on .txt and .rtf formats. Thanks for the offer of the card. I will PM you an addy. I appreciate it. I actually thought about an older Palm and it was more my choice, but this popped up from a guy I worked with, so I settled.

"Over Line!"

To me old technology is a two slot toaster and a black and white television that is able to receive three stations which are selected using a manual dial.

(Am I showing my age?)

Nancy Cole

~ ~ ~

"You may be what you resolve to be."

T.J. Jackson

Hey now.

I think I still have one of those B&W units out it the garage. It wouldstill work, if there was a signal to pick up, and if I could find a couple of tubes for it, I think. The first toaster I used didn't even have slots. It was a wire frame you placed the bread in that held it to a heat source, and you manually turned the bread around when it reached the level of crisp you desired.

I have this toaster where

I have this toaster where you fold the sides down flat, put in the bread, and pull the sides back up again. What are these "slots" of which you speak?

I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.

You have TV?

Luxury!!

Hugs
Carla Ann

Hi Stacy, I don't know

Hi Stacy,

I don't know anything about an IPAQ, personally I use a Dell Axim X51V which will take up to a 2Gb SD. I do most of my writing on my Dell, much larger screen than my LG smart phone. It's so nice I bought spair one through ebay, which came with a 512Mb SD. Send me a PM with a snail mail address and the 512 is yours.

Huggs & Giggles
Penny Reed Cardon

This is just

an old PDA handheld. I can write a note in script with a stylus, or use the stylus on a screen keyboard. It has a viewscreen smaller than a smart phone, (I guess, since I don't use one of them). That 512 sounds good. PM to follow.

I recently ran into trouble at work

copying a backup of some critical data (a bazillion tiny files) from a windows server to a cohort's 16G drive. It seems that USB sticks tend to come formatted with FAT32 these days, and we ran out of file nodes, not space. I was able to cart that stick into the server room, plug it into a linux server, and repartition it and format it with NTFS. We lost a bit of space, but it easily held the data after that.

Perhaps you can use the same technique, if you can find someone knowledgable in Linux. Perhaps you can repartition a larger card into a smaller space, and leave the rest undefined. Then format it with FAT16. I can't say it would work, but it's worth a try.

I love old technology, I still have my old Heathkit H8, from 1977. It used audio tape!

One note of caution, many forms of solid-state memory rely on a small internal battery or capacitor to hold a charge between power availability. There is an age limit for those devices beyond which data will deteriorate, especially if you don't power it on from time to time. So beware just buying old memory cards--they might not work.

Good luck!

Hugs
Carla Ann

Not this one again..

'modern' (last 10 years) flash memory does _not_ have a capacitor or battery. Never has. It's basically EEPROM memory. You're thinking of some of the really, REALLY old RAM drives, which, like high end RAID controllers, had to hang on to memory long enough to run it off to the physical drives.

However, the older flash ram does have a wear levelling problem, so it might not be useable for a lot of writes (reads should be fine)

I haven't had a chance to check that SD card that I have to see what size it is. I do have an older 1 gig that might work. The limit on the IPAQ might simply be SDHC vs SD.

(Come to think of it, there might have been ONE usb memory stick - not standard flash - that did have a capacitor. However, it wasn't for maintaining memory. As I recall, it was just a filter cap)

I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.

I just did a few searches.

Looks like the IPAQ 1910 has a maximum SD card size limit of 1 gig.

and... I just happen to have an old 1 gig SD card in my car. It hasn't even been used that much, as it was bought mostly for testing. I use an 8 gig for my main 'extra' hard drive card.

I'll see about wiping it and sending it off. With the 'old card' limit, you're better off having a half a dozen cards, using the smallest ones first. That way, when they start to die, you can switch to the next larger(newer) one, and maximise usage.

Oh, it looks like you can get a battery reasonably cheaply.

http://www.amazon.com/Lenmar-Li-Ion-Battery-Ipaq-1910/dp/B00...
http://www.longlast-battery.com/landing/index_products.asp?i...

that's just an example.

Oh! The card will have to be formatted FAT16 or FAT12. Most are FAT32 now.

I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.

When I read

and tried to use a one gig card, it offered to format it, but then just choked up and cried. It may have been the card. I appreciate the offer very much. I had not looked for a battery yet, but I also appreciate the look up. Saves a lot of time. The grandson left his phone in his pants pocket back in Dec. and my niece, helping out, washed his laundry load without checking pockets. I took the battery out, and it was fried, so I laid the phone up on top of the drier for a few days and then tried my battery and it came right on. He lucked out. I went to the net and the batteries were hard to find, and the prices varied from 40.00 plus shipping to the much more reasonable 14.00 with free shipping. Since I only paid 35.00 for these LG net 10 phones, I felt the 40.00 was a bit out of line for just the battery.

You may have only paid $35

You may have only paid $35 for the phones, but remember that they're subsidised. They're actually like $200, retail. (maybe a bit less)

The $14 battery is probably good enough.

I keep 90+% alcohol around (you can buy it at the drug stores. You have to watch out, though, they have a 'wintergreen', and they also have 50%, as well as the normal 70%) for cleaning electronics.

If you get a phone, or laptop, or anything like that, drenched with fluid, here's a way to clean it up.

First, unplug it and drop out the battery (if it has one).

Second, flush it with alcohol. If you have distilled water, like you use for ironing, boil that and pour it through, hot, before you do the alcohol. The alcohol will flush out the water, and the water will flush out anything sticky (sugary). If it didn't have sugar, you can skip the water step.

Put it at an angle, so that everything drains out from one corner. Let it dry for at least two hours. Preferably at least overnight. Stick it in the water heater closet or some other warm place to help, otherwise, leave it longer if it's cool.

At that point, you can put the battery back in and try it. If you've thoroughly flushed with anhydrous alcohol, you're pretty safe even if it's not completely dry. If you have _water_ stuck in it, or that 70% alcohol (or lower), then you _must_ give it enough time to be bone dry.

This works on keyboards, laptops, cellular phones, cordless microphones, and so forth. I've even used it on monitors.

I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.

Wet electronics

I read a long time ago that water was the antithesis of electronics. That is much less true than it was before. In fact, most circuit boards clean well with soap and water.

Back in the olden days, paper capacitors and several other types of components would be ruined by water. Now, just about everything is hermetically sealed. You only have to worry about things like speakers, motors (like the vibrators in phones,) and the like.

On the other hand, water is conductive*. Water will short out the works. Any contaminate will dry on, absorb water, and short out the works. Sugar will make things (like switches) sticky. Acids and salts will corrode the circuitry, so juices, soft drinks, and soup will cause big problems.

I agree with the suggestion of rinsing the equipment with distilled water. Failing that, use regular tap water. If you have a lot of junk in the equipment, use a bunch of tap water, then finish with distilled water (if you only have a little distilled water.

Of course, taking the whole thing apart and cleaning/servicing each piece separately is the best solution. I did that when my son barfed on his laptop. I had it working again -- until he found another way to abuse it. [sigh]

* Technically, distilled water isn't conductive. Any soft drink you are likely to find is conductive. Also, if you pour distilled water into your electronics, it will likely pick up enough contaminates on the way to become at least slightly conductive.