SD cards, CF cards, and readers

[Stween]

Hi,

In the (very) near future, I'm going to be working with Linux on an iPAQ. I only have Linux on my desktop/laptop machines at work. I'm wondering how well recent (2.6 kernel) versions of Linux cope with these cheap USB combo SD/CF card readers that are on the market? Is it a plug-in-and-go situation with Linux and these types of media, or is there more legwork to make things work, assuming support is there at all?


Cheers,
S.

[cybertron]

I have two such card readers, both no-name brands purchased from eBay, one of which is a USB1.1 SD-only reader and the other a 20-in-1 little of everything reader, and both worked flawlessly out of the box. They show up just like a flash drive for me and I mount them the same way. The only slight problem I had was that I can't leave them plugged in and just insert and remove the card because it wasn't recognized the second time until I plugged the whole thing back in. Not a big deal at all though.

AFAIK, my experience is fairly typical. Card readers are just USB mass storage devices, so in general there shouldn't be any problems. I suppose there might be some that use proprietary stuff like some digital cameras do these days, but I don't know what they would be.

[Stween]

Rightoh, thanks! :)

[bwkaz]

Note that I did see some specific drivers for certain readers (the Zio! that we use at work was one of them, IIRC) in the kernel, so depending on the reader's circuitry, you might need a different driver. But AFAIK, most of them are just straight usb-storage, yes.