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Found An E-20N : The Good, The Bad

Started 11 months ago | Discussions thread
Michael Meissner
Michael Meissner Forum Pro • Posts: 27,998
Re: Found An E-20N : The Good, The Bad

Hike Pics wrote:

Picked up one of these this past week for $22 US. It is in great condition physically (screen is perfect) and everything seems to work as it should. However, the camera reports all 5 of my CF cards as "Card Error". I have formatted each card (fat16) and the camera will not use them or format them.

Given the price, it may be the original owner may have bent the pins in the CF drive. I've done it in various readers, but I never did it in one of my CF using cameras. I do recall reading posts of other poor souls that did damage their CF pins. As I recall, in the last few years of using the E-5, I would never remove the card from the camera, just upload it via USB so I didn't run the risk of bending the pins.

My memory is I probably paid at least $30 for 128MB Smart Media cards back in the day (i.e. when I was actively shooting with SM cameras, roughly 2001 - 2013). I last used SM in my C-2100UZ 2-3 years ago, and it looks like my SM cards are starting to age, as I lost a few pictures due to media errors.

You may know this (or not), but the older SM cards were 5 volts instead of 3.3 volts, and couldn't be used in the later cameras.  So if you are buying smaller SM cards (2-4 M?), be sure they are 3.3 volts.

According to Wikipedia, production on SM cards ended in 2006.

 Michael Meissner's gear list:Michael Meissner's gear list
Olympus Stylus 1 Olympus TG-5 Olympus E-M5 III OM-1 Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 9-18mm F4.0-5.6 +13 more
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