CARDSPEED - Card Readers and Memory Cards

Past meets Present

What happens if you feed today's memory cards to a card reader from the year 2003? For this experiment, I selected three card readers from my collection having the oldest controllers, based on the manufacturing week:

• smsc USB97C210, week 09/2003
• Genesys Logic GL816, week 08/2003
• KTC FC1320, week(?) 09/2003

The important question is: What kind of memory cards were available in 2003? Unfortunately, I can't answer this question exactly. CompactFlash cards must have been at 1-2GB, with the Hitachi 4GB Microdrive being released towards the end of 2003 or early 2004. SD cards must have been around 512MB-1GB at that time, and the transition to Memory Stick PRO must have been during the year 2003, replacing the previous generation Memory Stick with a maximum of 128MB or Memory Stick Select of 2x128MB.

Quick Summary

To be honest: I was pretty sure that the 32GB CompactFlash card would work, because the CF interface is based on the ATA interface, with harddisks of more than 128GB already available in 2003. 128GB is the size limit for current CompactFlash cards, the specification does not mention the 48-bit LBA mode that would be required to break this barrier. But I'm sure that in the meantime there are devices that could properly support 48-bit LBA with CompactFlash cards.

The Memory Stick were in the lucky position of being in transition to Memory Stick PRO, so the current Memory Stick PRO-HG will work in Memory Stick PRO compatible devices, at least up to a certain size, and with the use of an adapter to full-size Memory Stick.

The first SDHC compatible card reader controllers are from January 2006, so SDHC support is sill far, far away for a card reader from the year 2003. The SD standard required special handling for cards of more than 1GB, and some controllers still did not support more than 1GB SD in the year 2006!

The MMCplus standard must have been released in 2004. Thanks to the compatibility mode, MMCplus work in devices supporting MMC 3.31, but only at a maximum of 2.4MB/s. The HC-MMC standard for MMCplus of more than 4GB has been annnounced. But as of today, I did not get hold of such a card, if it actually exists outside of test labs and Photoshop. The largest MMCplus available for testing is 4GB.

This is the summary of the test results...

Card Type	smsc USB97C210		Genesys GL816		KTC FC1320
CompactFlash	32GB OK,	5.8MB/s	32GB OK,	3.2MB/s	32GB OK,	4.6MB/s
MS PRO-HG	-		-		8GB OK,	8.4MB/s
MS PRO	-		-		8GB OK,	8.4MB/s
SDHC	-		-		-
SD	max. 1GB,	7.0MB/s	4GB OK,	5.9MB/s	4GB OK,	6.7MB/s
MMCplus	max. 1GB,	2.1MB/s	4GB OK,	1.7MB/s	4GB OK,	1.6MB/s

For more details, see the  test results table  below.

Explanations

Any CompactFlash card is supposed to work properly in older devices - however, only at the speed allowed by the device. The test was not just about whether the card reader would detect the proper size of the card, the three card readers passed a full test run with the 32GB CF card. Please note that this test procedure took about 22 hours on the slowest reader. Reading a full 32GB card at 3.2MB/s takes about 2 hours 40 minutes.

Memory Stick PRO and Memory Stick PRO-HG are supposed to work properly in Memory Stick PRO compatible devices. However, some devices might have poor implementations, and might not detect larger media sizes properly.

SDHC cards won't work at all in devices before 2006, and proper support for 2GB and 4GB SD cards in 2003's card readers is still a matter of luck. Some devices were even intentionally built not to work with 4GB SD cards, after the SD Association declared those cards "non-compliant".

MMCplus will work in MMC compatible devices, but will run at the low MMC 3.31 speed only, usually somewhere in the range from 1.6 to 2.4MB/s. For cards of more than 1GB, the same problems as with SD cards can occur.

Controller Details

At the right you can see the smsc USB97C210 from my first USB 2.0 card reader that I bought in September 2003, if I don't count the slow one I sent back. The controller is dated week 9/2003 (February/March), while the firmware flash chip is dated week 25/2003 (June). The firmware level from this model is 1.63, with successor versions 1.97, 2.16 and 2.50, but none of these would fix the SD size issues. According to the revision history for the successor, the USB97C223 controller, firmware 3.60 is supposed to fix the SD card size issues for that model. The USB97C223 is supposed to add support for Memory Stick PRO and xD-Picture Cards of Type S. My collection only holds one reader using the USB97C223, dated week 49/2003 and firmware 1.95, a very early version for this controller. A funny side note: I managed to pick up another USB987C210 based card reader in a shop, late 2007 or early 2008! The controller is dated week 49/2003 and the firmware used is 1.97, so the reader spent about 4 years in the retail chain.

Below is the Genesys Logic GL816, dated week 08/2003 (February). The firmware flash in the large PLCC package (Plastic J-Leaded Chip Carrier) is dated week 15/2002 (April), but it's already a "large" 1Mbit (128k×8), while the firmware binaries usually stay well below 64kB. This card reader might be the oldest of the three contestants. The firmware used is version 0113, where later versions are supposed to add Type S xD-Picture Card compatibility up to 512MB.

The GL816 is the predecessor of the famous Genesys Logic GL816E, probably the best Genesys Logic controller. The GL816E, where the earliest in my collection is dated week 38/2003, added support for Memory Stick PRO and xD-Picture Cards of Type S. The GL816E with firmware 9144 was able to break the "magic" speed barrier of 10MB/s with Memory Stick PRO. First SD 1.1 cards with higher speed were released in 2005!

Below is the KTC FC1320, where the date code either means week 09/2003 (February/March) or September 27th 2003. The firmware flash is dated week 30/2003 (July/August), so the reader was built in August 2003 or later. The various USB IDs and the firmware revision contain the string "2003", so there is enough evidence that the card reader including the firmware is from somewhere within the year 2003.

Unfortunately, this is the only card reader in my collection featuring a controller from KTC. The FC1320 was very ahead of time: With the use of a SmartMedia to xD-Picture Card adapter, it can even handle Type M xD-Picture Cards up to 1GB!

Detailed test results

The table below shows the detailed tests results for the three contestants.