Rio Carbon MP3 Has A 5G CF To Be Cannibalized 256
GlucoPilot writes "This guy bought a Rio Carbon Mp3 player because he figured he could rip the 5GB CF Card out of it. He did, and put it in his prosumer 6MP digital camera. Now he can take 1,500 six-megapixel pics in one sitting. Oy." The card is apparently a 5GB Microdrive, note, not 5GB of Flash memory.
Re:Speaking of cameras... (Score:5, Informative)
Not suitable for continuous r/w operations! Mp3 player/Camera use is a single file being written then the drive is stopped again....
No News Here (Score:4, Informative)
I don't see why this is making news now. Those of us with the high end digital SLR and such have been doing this since we first found out you could get these CF cards in these players. It's cheaper to buy the player and canblize it for the CF than to buy the CF.
Waste of a good player if you ask me.
Re:Speaking of cameras... (Score:5, Informative)
A full miniDV tape is 30GB worth. Microdrives are still stuck at 6GB. Additionally, an mp3 player has a very low disk access frequency, which reduces the risks of physical damage while reading/writing. A camcorder on the other hand, is CONSTANTLY accessing the disk.
Re:Speaking of cameras... (Score:5, Informative)
Article Text - Server Super Slow (Score:5, Informative)
As I described yesterday, I bought a very nice MP3 player, the new Rio Carbon 5GB model. It's awesome, and I already like it a lot. My original intent, though, was not to buy an MP3 player to listen to music, but instead to rip apart for its 5GB hard drive, for use in my Nikon D70 digital camera. But once I saw the Carbon, I decided it was time to own an MP3 player, so I got two.
Rather than eating lunch today, I decided I would share my story of destruction. In part two of our saga, I tear into the second of the two Carbons I bought, pictures included.
Note: If you decide to spend $249 on one of these things and tear it apart yourself, you do so at your own risk. It's value to Rio and the store you bought it at will instantly become $0, and your warranty will be a thing of the past. At your own risk, your mileage may vary, do not pass go, please tip your waitress. Oh, and whatever you do, don't come yelling at me. It's your own damn fault. In fact, you will probably end up with $249 worth of useless junk. You have been warned.
Okay, so first of all let me tell you right up front that I broke the thing to the point where I will have to use a little glue to put it back together. The Carbon has a metal back plate, and a plastic front plate, with a rubber surround. What I did not realize is that the front plate is in sections, as well. Not realizing this, I didn't remove the front plastic facing (the silver plastic with the LCD window and the Rio logo) from the body of the MP3 player. It is held in place with some adhesive. Just be careful while you remove it and it will come right off. Once off, it may be that there is a better way to get this thing apart than the method I used. If I will have to use some glue inside where it used to have screws holding things together, because I broke a few plastic threads on the plastic case where the screws were attached as I pried it apart.
While it looks from the outside like the rubber portion is a section all on it's own, it in fact is not. The rubber part is just glued to the plastic front plate, which is under the silver plastic front cover just mentioned.
How I got it apart (your mileage may vary, be careful): I started by working a small screwdriver around the case, prying very gently between the metal back plate and the rubberized section. There are a number of metal tabs that you will see inside as you go. Those hod the drive in place. Be careful and don't go too deep or apply too much pressure inside with your screwdriver, you will break things if you do, or you might crack the case. If you don't care about reusing the Carbon, you can afford to be a little more indiscriminate, but things are packed together pretty tight in the small case, so caution and taking one's time is warranted.
Once I worked all the way around with the small screwdrivers (I used 2, it helped keep things working along), I peeked inside to become a little bit familiar (there's a lot you just cannot see, though). Then I used a screwdriver inserted from the bottom of the case to get good leverage as pictured below, and worked the case looser.
In the end, I used my fingers, after loosening with the screwdriver, to take the case apart. Again, note that I broke the plastic threaded screw posts in the process. The end result was a front plate, a loose power button (just insert it back in place later), the top chrome-like trim plate (that has the holes in it for USB, earphones, etc), and the back plate with all the electronics attached. The front panel navigation button is loose when you disassemble it - it's held in place by the front plate.
There are two screws that you will need to remove from the face of the circuit board (the side with the LCD screen), and then you can start to swing the circuit board away from the hard drive. Below is the view from the side, pulling the circuit board up and away from the battery (lower left) and hard drive (in the lower center of the picture under t
this is kind of cool but ... (Score:2, Informative)
its about $180 for a 5G drive with some sort of warranty
Re:Er, Duplicate Article (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Article Text - Server Super Slow (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Speaking of cameras... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:my wish list... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:1500? (Score:5, Informative)
Not really. The Digital Rebel and 10D both get about 500-600 shots out of the battery if you don't use the flash, AF in servo mode(ie continuous refocusing) or use a lens with image stabilization a lot. Canon and Nikon both make vertical grips for their cameras which hold two standard battery packs.
I've gone to motorsport events and taken 2-3GB of RAW photos on one battery pack, and I use both image stabilization and AI servo focus mode. I have two packs, and I've almost never needed the second one in my year of ownership thus far.
I have an older 330MB microdrive. It's slow as shit. CF cards used to be slower, now it's completely the opposite. Compared to my Sandisk Extreme and Ultra II cards, the microdrive takes 4x longer to offload photos from the buffer.
When you've been shooting pictures of every 4th car going by you and then one of them locks up the rear and starts to spin, you want as many shots out of the 9-shot camera buffer as possible. Shoot continuous at 3fps for 3 seconds and sort the good from the bad on the laptop later.
Most pros don't use anything over 1GB. Why? Because 1GB is almost 120 photos for a 10D- a shitload. So you're not swapping that often. By using 4 1GB cards- if one gets erased, stepped on, lost, or dies on you- you're only out 1/4 of your photos, instead of ALL of them. Furthermore- 1 can be in your 'digital wallet' widget or laptop, while the other is in your camera. Oh, and it's hideously expensive for a 4GB card versus a 1GB card or a bunch of 512's, just like those super-huge memory dimms cost much more per MB than a 512 or 1GB stick.
Re:1500? (Score:3, Informative)
I'm about to take mine out to do some shotting and I've been shooting on the same battery for 2 weeks now.
Re:my wish list... (Score:1, Informative)
I hate to tell you this, but... (Score:3, Informative)
You can't see? (Score:3, Informative)
If a company A is more successful than company B because it acts nicer, that will reinforce company A's nice behavior.
If that is what you value in a company AND it's products, since no product exists in a vacuum, then it SHOULD inspire loyalty from you because that is what you pay for. If you DON'T value niceness, then of course it shouldn't inspire loyalty from you.
Some of us happen to like nicer companies than unnice, or even evil, companies, and choose our 'loyalty' accordingly.
Loyalty may be too strong a word, but our proclivities if that seems better to you.
Seagate Drive Will Soon Be Released As Standalone (Score:4, Informative)
Seagate says drives will ship in September (Score:5, Informative)
The drive was designed in Singapore and manufactured in China. Seagate, once a California company, is now so multinational they barely have US operations. They've closed plants in Ireland, Mexico, Mayalasia, and Singapore because those places weren't low-cost enough.
Here's the ST1 drive manual [seagate.com]. Expect a glut of these things in January, once the holiday season business has been fulfilled and the production lines are running at full speed.
Re:5GB Microdrive on eBay: $96 (Score:5, Informative)
This drive is PC Card sized, which is not usable in any modern consumer digital camera. The seller was simply keyword spamming. "Microdrive" is actually a marketing name created by IBM (and then sold to Hitachi) for a hard drive with a CompactFlash interface, so neither this auction nor the Seagate drive can be legally called a Microdrive.
Re:How is this not nice? (Score:5, Informative)
A quick google search reveals that a professional camera shop/mail order company sells a 4 GByte microdrive for $370-$500, while the MP3 player is expected to retail for $250. The difference is due to market pricing, as professional photographers are used to paying thousands for a professional camera, while the average consumer is used to paying hundreds for a portable digital product. The casing of the product hides the fact that both products used the same core component. Eventually the market will realize this and take action- perhaps choosing MP3 players with removable microdrives
This isn't any different from Amazon's price discrimination [kdnuggets.com] for books.
Re:1500? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Energy consumption (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Speaking of cameras... (Score:4, Informative)
players makes two types of drives. One type has both a IDE interface
and a CF (compact flash) interface. These will work in the MP3 players,
cameras, and as a hard drive on a computer. The other type only has
the IDE interface. These will work in the MP3 players and as a hard
drive on a computer, but will not work on the cameras. The Apple uses
the IDE only drive. The Muvo used the IDE and CF compatible version
until Hitachi made them switch to the IDE only version, because it was
hurting sales of their stand alone product at much higher margins. The
Rio player uses a Seagate drive so the issues may be different.
BTW Creative has a new Muvo with the Seagate drive, that is easier to take apart.
http://www.vr-zone.com/?i=1249&s=1 [vr-zone.com]
http://www.photo.net/equipment/hitachi/mp3microdr
Re:Speaking of cameras... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:How is this not nice? (Score:3, Informative)
A corporation is not a person; legally, figuratively, literally, or in any other fashion. A corporation is a model of ownership, just like "sole proprietorship" or "partnership."
Two of the most obvious differences between a "corporation" and either of the other two ownership models I mentioned are (1) a corporation uses allocation of stock to shareholders, whether publicly traded or not, and (2) the separate entity clause, which says very clearly that the assets, debts, etc. of the corporation are separate from the assets, debts, etc. of the owners (shareholders) - meaning if a company gets sued, litigants generally can't make a claim against the shareholders' assets.
By definition, a corporation is necessarily not a person, even in the instance of a corporation with a single shareholder.