On Thu, Feb 3, 2011 at 12:52 AM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckin...@gmail.com> wrote: > Apparently, though unproven, at 08:08 on Thursday 03 February 2011, Paul > Hartman did opine thusly: > >> On Wed, Feb 2, 2011 at 8:11 PM, walt <w41...@gmail.com> wrote: >> > On 02/02/2011 03:05 PM, Paul Hartman wrote: >> >> On Wed, Feb 2, 2011 at 3:29 PM, walt<w41...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >>> On 02/02/2011 07:48 AM, Paul Hartman wrote: >> >>>> I have a USB SD-card reader which cannot read the partition table when >> >>>> first inserted into the PC. >> >>> >> >>> That sounds to me like a bug :) do you see the same on other >> >>> computers? >> >> >> >> Yes, every computer (for several kernel versions now) >> > >> > Well, if an older kernel uses the card reader normally and newer kernels >> > don't, then I assume a kernel bug is responsible. >> > >> > What *I* would do is to use git-bisect in Linus's kernel git repository >> > to isolate the "bad" commit and then report it to the person who >> > submitted the original bad patch to Linus. >> > >> > If that idea sounds weird -- I plead nolo contendere. Yet, it gets >> > kernel bugs fixed. (Very roughly paraphrasing Galileo ;) >> >> I meant that I've tried it for a few kernel versions (it's not a new >> card reader, it's a few years old). It has never worked properly in >> Linux since I've owned it. > > Then the reader itself is probably horribly broken. Or has been built to > comply to "whatever broken Windows is doing today" > > My USD card reader JustWorks(tm) everywhere with everything. And they are dirt > cheap, about the price of the smallest SD card I can buy. > > Time for a new reader perhaps?
Of course, I have others. I was just reporting to Helmut what workaround I've used in case his has a similar problem. The misbehaving one is extremely fast when it works, compared to the others I've tried. It uses the Silicon Motion SM331 chipset. It's a generic no-name reader. I've seen reports that newer packages of the same reader now use the SM334 chipset instead, which I imagine fixes whatever problems may have been present in the older revision. I'm generally more interested in learning why things are broken than using things that are not. :) I didn't mean to derail the original thread. Sorry about that!
