In linux, you could simply dd data to the device node: dd
if=myimage.bin of=/dev/sdd for example, if that's how your card is
recognized.
In Windows, there is also a way to access a device directly, by
accessing path \\.\X: . Look through this msdn entry for CreateFile,
in the Physical Access section:
http://windowssdk.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms685006.aspx

- Marcel

On 11/7/06, James Nick Sears <jnsears@jamesnsears.com> wrote:
> Is there a way (and if so what is the best way) to access a memory
> card without a filesystem from Windows (or Linux or Mac)?  Something
> programmatic I'm thinking - so I could just write data to a card with
> a PC with custom software and simply stream it off with a PIC without
> worrying about files or filesystems (or vice versa).
>
> -n.
>
>
> On Nov 7, 2006, at 2:31 PM, peter green wrote:
>
> >
> >
> >
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: piclist-bounces@mit.edu [mailto:piclist-bounces@mit.edu]On
> >> Behalf
> >> Of Harold Hallikainen
> >> Sent: 07 November 2006 19:03
> >> To: Microcontroller discussion list - Public.
> >> Subject: RE: [PIC] Interfacing a PIC to a microSD or TransFlash card
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>>
> >>>> FAT32 goes up to 32GB in actual implementations
> >>> i have a 160 gig fat32 hard drive in an external caddy running
> >>> just fine
> >>> with XP, i just had to format it using a win98 box.
> >>>
> >>
> >> Is the "limitation" how many sectors are allowed per cluster?
> >> Microsoft's
> >> FAT Overview says BPB_SecPerClus is one byte. Supposedly, for
> >> FAT16 (which
> >> is what I'm most familiar with), this could allow 255 sectors per
> >> cluster
> >> times 512 bytes per sector times about 65,535 clusters or 8.55e9
> >> bytes per
> >> disk. This would be a cluster size of 262,144 bytes. The Microsoft
> >> document also says the cluster size must be a power of 2, so the
> >> maximum
> >> would then be 128, or 65536 bytes per cluster. It ALSO goes on to
> >> say you
> >> cannot have a cluster size greater than 32kBytes.
> > IIRC NT allowed you to break that rule and have 64k clusters, I
> > remember the 98 resource kit saying that 98 could read and write
> > fat16 partitions over 2 gigabytes but none of its disk utilities
> > were comaptible with them.
> >
> >
> >> Is FAT32 similar, but with a larger FAT table, and with 32 bit
> >> cluster
> >> identifiers in that table?
> > i think that is the gist of it but i belive there are some other
> > minor changes too.
> >
> > according to wikipedia
> >
> > "In order to overcome the volume size limit of FAT16, while still
> > allowing DOS real-mode code to handle the format without
> > unnecessarily reducing the available conventional memory, Microsoft
> > decided to implement a newer generation of FAT, known as FAT32,
> > with cluster counts held in a 32-bit field, of which 28 bits are
> > currently used."
> >
> > so that would mean 256 megaclusters
> >
> > which keeping the 32K cluster size limit would mean 8 terabytes
> >
> > i don't know why wikipedia says the actual limit is 2 terrabytes
> > and i don't have any ms docs handy to compare but either way its
> > big enough not to be a worry for most hard drives just yet.
> >
> >
> > --
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> > View/change your membership options at
> > http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist
>
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