A70 No longer sees some CF Cards

[buzzlightyear]

I have had my A70 for about 19 months, and it has been great.

However, just after Christmas, the camera has lost its ability to see my larger CF cards. I have 2 256MB cards, and the orginal Canon 16MB that came with the camera.

At first, one of cards (SMART Technology) would occasionally be reported with a message in the LCD screen - "No Memory Card". If I restarted or reseated the card it would be OK. But over the next few days it stopped seeing that card completely.

The same this started happening to the other 256 MB card (PNY) on New Years day. It would be OK in the camera most of the time, but occasionally I would get the "No Memory Card" message. And it deterioriated as well, and the A70 can no longer see that card as well.

I have had both of these cards since for at least 15 months, and they have been fine until now. Also, the cards seem to be OK - I can plug them into my CF card slot on the computer and they have no issues. I have reformatted them on the Computer with no better results in the camera, and was able to get the PNY to reformat in the camera at one point, but I have not been able to get the camera to recognize it but one time since I did that.

I also upgraded the firmware on the camera from 1.0 to 2.0, but got no change in bad behavior.

And strangely the orginal 16 MB card seems to be OK; so far at least. But the camera is not terribly useful with this dinky card.

Any ideas or comments would be appreciated.

Thanks

[gsmx2]

Buzz,

I don't have a TRIED AND TRUE solution for you, but I do know that problem. You should not use the computer to format your cards. They should only be formatted in the camera.

If you want to try to get those cards to work, you can try these instructions...but no guarentees. But since they don't work, what have you got to lose...as long as you type carefully.

Put the card in your card reader and make sure you know what letter it is...for this example, I'll assume it shows up as the letter F:

Make sure no program is looking at the drive---like Explorer
Use START/RUN off the task bar
Type: COMMAND <hit enter>
Type: F: <hit enter> to switch to the card
Type: DIR <hit enter> to make sure you are looking at the card, not anything else
Type: C: <hit enter>

OK, now type this very carefully so you don't format something you don't want to format. Remember, I am using F as the card in this example....yours may be different.

Type: FORMAT F: /FS:FAT /V:CANON_DC <hit enter>
Follow any prompt you receive. After the card has formatted,
Type: EXIT <hit enter> to close the dos prompt

Try it in your camera and see if it is recognized. Good luck. I did run through these directions with a 8 MG card...but it was working OK when I started.

gsm x2

[buzzlightyear]

Thanks for the reply - I tried this but to no avail. The camera just does not see the card - it acts like there is no card plugged into the slot. My computer can see these cards just fine - but the A70 can not see them. Its just bizzare.

But that 16 MB still seems to work just fine.

Sigh.

[gsmx2]

Sorry to hear it didn't work. :cry:

Next thing I think I would try is to either take the card to a friend who has a similar camera, or run over to a big box store that displays the cameras, and try to format my card in one of those cameras.

Good luck,

Scott

[buzzlightyear]

An update, but no final solution on this one.

It seems that this problem is totally mechanincal. I have discovered that the CF cards, if pressed really, really hard into the slot, will work for a while. There seems to be no real electronic problem, other than the fact that the camera can't connect to the cards. I just wonder what would make my CF card slot go bad? I also wonder if its possible to replace this socket with a new one?

thanks