Can an Olympus E20P take 8GB flash cards?

Question

I have an Olympus E20P camera that is about 10 years old, and the manual says it supports

3V (3.3V) SmartMedia: 4 MB, 8 MB, 16 MB, 32 MB, 64 MB, 128 MB;

CompactFlash (type I and II) Microdrive (CF + type II standard)

Right now I am using a CompactFlash/Microdrive 256MB, which seems to work.

Does anyone know if a 8GB CompactFlash or SmartMedia will work?

Answer

The E20 FAQ from Olympus says that CompactFlash-interface microdrives up to "1gig" are supported. That doesn't necessarily mean that bigger cards won't work, though — unlike SmartMedia, CF doesn't require device support for larger capacities, since there's a standard interface with "smarts" in the card itself. ("Smartmedia" is an Orwellian misnomer; it's the exact opposite — which is one of the reasons it failed to catch on.)

But, it's also very likely that there are other limits that prevent a card much larger than the expected to work. (For one thing, you may run into a limitation on FAT volume size.) You could chance it — it may work. Or you can get a 1GB card which will almost certaily be no problem.

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