Commander X16

What is the smallest and largest capacity SD card I can use with the CX16?

The only relevant info I could find is in the FAQ, but it only states "Older SD cards with less than 2GB may not be supported."

I got some hits from this forum's search results but those results are dead links (I presume to archived/inaccessible threads). The only solid fact I know is that 8GB is supported, because that's what arrived in the box with my brand new CX16 yesterday

I found this in the CMDR-DOS documentation:
"CMDR-DOS uses the industry-standard FAT-32 format. Partitions can be 32MB up to (in theory) 2TB"
which also doesn't really address how much the CX16 can ... address.

Why I'm asking is I want to by an SD card for daily use and experimenting, and all I know for sure is 8GB works, 2GB "probably won't work", and 2TB works "in theory". But 8GB cards are a lot harder to find than, say, 32GB cards. I don't really have any other use for an SD card, so I'd like to buy something cheap, easy, and compatible.

Personally I have testet several 16GB cards of different brands without any issues.
The 8GB card that came with the system, obviously works.
I have a 32GB noname card and a 128 GB Samsung card that also work.
So far I have not testet an SD card that did not work.

I think that you should be fairly safe by buying a 32GB card.

SolarSurfer wrote: ↑Fri Jan 26, 2024 2:49 am I found this in the CMDR-DOS documentation:
"CMDR-DOS uses the industry-standard FAT-32 format. Partitions can be 32MB up to (in theory) 2TB"
which also doesn't really address how much the CX16 can ... address.

Why I'm asking is I want to by an SD card for daily use and experimenting, and all I know for sure is 8GB works, 2GB "probably won't work", and 2TB works "in theory". But 8GB cards are a lot harder to find than, say, 32GB cards. I don't really have any other use for an SD card, so I'd like to buy something cheap, easy, and compatible.

AFAIU, if it uses FAT32, then it seems like an SDHC card should work, since SDHC was originally designed for FAT32. Original SD was the one before SDHC, formatted in FAT12 or FAT16, and SDXC is the one after SDHC, formatted in exFAT.

SDHC cards come in sizes up to 32GB, and the SD Association says that cards that are 32GB should be formatted as FAT32, so if its a 32GB card from a reputable maker, what has been quoted makes it sound like that should be OK.

Note that FAT32 can be formatted up to 2TB, but exFAT is more efficient for drives of that size, so if you have an SDXC card that is 64GB or larger, and it is set up per SD Association Standards, it will be formatted exFAT, so you would have to reformat it to FAT32 to find out if it works.

I would guess that is what the "in theory up to 2TB" means, since a modern 2TB card ought to be formatted exFAT, so it can't be operated as a FAT32 drive until reformatting.

While not yet in common use, the ultra-high capacity SDUC cards are not required to offer SPI mode, so they should be avoided.

> ...But 8GB cards are a lot harder to find...

Um, not really. A simple trip to Amazon revealed these results:
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=8g+sd+cards& ... _sb_noss_1

I'm sure you find something to "buy" here.

Thanks for all the replies. I'll buy a 32GB SDHC card from the place local to me (I'm not adventurous enough to buy them from amazon!)

The simple answer is that no one has done thorough testing of which cards work and which do not, so we don't actually know definitively which cards won't work.

If people want to contribute to some sort of "I tried this, and it worked," sheet, we can certainly put something like that up (kind of like we did with the Serial No. Tracker).

FWIW, the card that shipped with my CX16 was

Silicon Power 8GB SDHC Class 10 SD Memory Card
https://sp-siliconpower.com/products/si ... emory-card