D1H Card Issues

Say what you will, but I've become a bit of a Nikon collector and have acquired two D1Hs recently.

I'm having issues with both with regard to getting cards to work in them, however. One of my cameras(a "high mileage" one from the local newspaper) did briefly work, but I can't get anything out of a second one(bought mostly for the charger and batteries included, although it's nicer than my first).

I've gone through my stashes of small cards-basically everything in the 16-512mb range and probably 7 or 8 total cards. I have a few cards that are on the officially approved list for the camera, and are verified to work fine in other cameras. I've formatted them in the D1H multiple times, and have also formatted them in the computer(FAT32).

Basically, I pop a card in and the camera will recognize it, but it will report 1 shot taken on the frame counter and 0 remaining. Attempting to take a shot gives "Cd" in the viewfinder window.

Does anyone have any idea on what might be going on here? As I mentioned, I did briefly have one of these cameras working with one of the cards, so I feel like it might be a matter of missing an esoteric step unique to these cameras.

As if camera sees memory cards size too small for pictures. There apparently was limit in maximum size of card of 2GB in D1H. With freshly formatted 2GB card D1H shows 1 in frame counter as first frame and FL in remaining capasity. With freshly formatted 256MB card D1H shows 1 in frame counter as first frame and 61 in remaining capasity.

If 2 button format is not making memory card to work I would not worry too much.

As I said, I don't think the issue is card size.

I have been limiting myself to cards 512mb and smaller with this, and as I said I have some of the cards that Nikon tested/endorsed for use in the camera. The cards work fine in other cameras.

My D70s would sometimes 'forget' that it had a card in it.

If I take it out, and put it back in, it would work again.

Seems to me that it might be just the contacts with the card, but when I got a good deal on a D200, I bought that one.

I suspect that it is the contacts with the card, and not deeper than that, but I don't know that it is easy to fix.

I had to look up the 'Cd' error; it does show in an illustration on p34 of the manual (link here if yours did not come with one: http://cdn-10.nikon-cdn.com/pdf/manuals/dslr/D1H_en.pdf). That page says that 'Cd' means that there are 0 images remaining on the card. So, as @hapien said, it's like the camera thinks the card is too small. If you've freshly formatted the card, you should have space. I've had 2 D1h cameras, and had no trouble with 2gb card (SanDisk Extreme III).

You might try a factory reset on the camera (something I saw suggested in blogs). According to Nikon (https://www.nikonimgsupport.com/ni/NI_article?articleNo=000003758&configured=1&lang=en_US) the 'two-button' combination for the D1 series is Func + Thumbnail (the black-and-white-grid button).

I'm also with @glen_h in thinking a contact is not working. If a pin is not bent in the camera that works/worked (something to check in the other if it even turns on), then maybe they are dirty? (I'm assuming its not the card contacts since they work in other cameras.)

Thanks everyone.

I suppose a damaged slot is possible, but now both my cameras are giving me the same error and as I said one did work briefly.

I stopped by my favorite local haunt on Friday and asked for "old, small cards." As almost always, they came through and I came home with a half dozen assorted Lexar and Sandisk cards 512mb and below, and again several of the cards I have and just picked up are on Nikon's list of specifically approved cards for the D1H(BTW, I love this shop and have become good friends with the owner. I had bought a few items on Ebay with them and was settling up on those, and they added a whopping $1 onto my bill for the cards I mentioned plus a Sandisk 4gb Extreme III and a 4gb Hitachi Microdrive).

I went through and formatted all the cards in a D70 just to make sure, but they still read the same in the D1H. Furthermore, I don't think either D1H is formatting in camera-per the instructions I should hold down the two buttons and wait for "For" to appear on the top LCD then push them again. I do that, but the camera doesn't display "For" in the frame count box like my other cameras and it has failed to wipe several cards that I knew were less than full.

I did do a two-buitton reset also, and I know it took as the some of the custom settings from the previous owner(like to only AF with the AF on button) had set.

I'm beginning to suspect that what I may not have is a card problem or a camera problem, but actually a battery problem especially since two cameras(one of which I had working not even a month ago) now show the same symptoms. In addition, I can't get the screen to turn on with either camera-not even to access menus. Before I had a "real" charger, I charged the batteries I had by rigging them up to a lab bench PSU and carefully watching the voltage and current to determine their charge state. The battery that came with my first camera would turn it on and autofocus but the shutter wouldn't release-something I learned can cause be the result of a battery that doesn't power the camera enough to turn on the sensor or perform some other functions. I seem to recall that when the other DID work, I had this same problem and it took some battery fiddling to get it to work at first.

In any case, I now have a real MH-16 and a half dozen batteries(I actually bought the second mostly for the batteries and charger even though it's much nicer than the first). I have used the refresh function on the charger on all the batteries, but it doesn't seem to change things aside from getting one of my batteries from being completely dead to at least being able to power up the camera. I wonder if the purpose-built charger is conservative and I was able to pump in just enough power to get the batteries over the line to make the camera work with my home-made charger. I do know that-per a sticker-one of the genuine Nikon batteries was bought in 2008. As a side note, my first D1H traces its lineage to the local newspaper-a daily with the largest circulation in the state. I know that in 2005, my home-town paper had two or three D2Hs, but then they also only kept two photographers on staff at the time as opposed to probably 20(at that time) at the Courier Journal.

All of that aside, I've bought a genuine Nikon D1 series wall cord, and am considering picking up a new battery or two. My Finepix Pro S3(based on the N80) shipped with a set of NiMH AA rechargeables, meaning that it's super easy to replace old batteries and you can also use alkalines in a pinch. I wish Nikon had gone with that strategy on the D1 series cameras-I strongly suspect the original packs are 6 AAs anyway-I should crack one open and see if it can be recelled.

Maybe.. just Maybe..

AT the time of the D1* camera's , they still used to have a " non user service-able" internal clock battery, which would be replaced by Nikon whenever a camera came "in" f or CLS

These batteries would have supposedly a maximum lifespan of around 10 years , and are used , among others, for maintaining the internal clock ..

When charged they would keep charge for around 3 months, and would be re-charged by either placing a fully charged battery in the camera for at least 2 days, or have the camera at a "wall" power supply unit" for the same amount of time ( if i understand well..)

Just did a little search and found multiple mentions on the previouse too like this one : Internal battery clock location on D1???

SO maybe this helps, maybe not ..

BTW. : "I've formatted them in the D1H multiple times, and have also formatted them in the computer(FAT32)"

To my knowledge the D1* camera's still used FAT16 formatting ( e.g. pre windows Vista etc.) , effectively limiting the Card to 2GB max. Larger cards would be seen as 2gb for this reason ...

Thanks-that's an avenue certainly worth exploring.

I did buy a wall power pack also, so I'll see if I can maybe "jump start" them using that.

Interestingly enough, I don't THINK the cards are actually formatting in the cameras...these things are turning into a headache just for the curiosity of playing with early DSLRs. I have a Kodak DSC-14n on my "want" list(even though I know they have serious noise issues) but if I'm going to run into this with it I may reconsider :) . With that said, I do have another N80-based DSLR(FinePix S3 Pro) and it seems solid albeit slow and quirky.

In any case, maybe I'll try externally formatting them again in FAT16, although I'm not sure where I need to go to do that. I don't have a working PC with USB or Firewire at the moment. I seem to recall that Mac OS 9 has that option, so maybe I'll try in that(I do have plenty of computers handy running OS 8.6 or 9.2.2 and with USB, Firewire, and/or some other means means of reading cards like a CardBus slot).

Thanks-that's an avenue certainly worth exploring.

 

Interestingly enough, I don't THINK the cards are actually formatting in the cameras...these things are turning into a headache just for the curiosity of playing with early DSLRs. I have a Kodak DSC-14n on my "want" list(even though I know they have serious noise issues) but if I'm going to run into this with it I may reconsider :) . With that said, I do have another N80-based DSLR(FinePix S3 Pro) and it seems solid albeit slow and quirky.

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Once formatted FAT32 , the camera probably will not know how to format the card, since it will not recognize the boot sector of the card, so the only way would be to format the card through a more modern device which also is capable of formatting FAT / FAT16 I guess..

Possibly , if you buy newe cards now, they will already be "pre-formatted" in either NTFS or FAT32 , so out of the box recent cards will have the same challenge for the camera, ....

I could have sworn that Mac OS 9 had an option for "MS DOS format" which would be FAT16 in Drive Set-Up, but couldn't find it or any FAT options when I attempted a format last night in my Titanium PowerBook via a PCMCIA adapter.

Fortunately, since CF cards really are tiny ATA drives, it's possible to mount and use them in older versions of the Mac OS/System software so I just need to figure out how far back to go. You need OS 8.6 or newer to use a USB card reader(Firewire might work back to 8.1 or so, but I'm not positive) although using them as an ATA drive is very much possible whether directly on the bus or via PCMCIA/CardBus.

With all of that said, I dug out a Thinkpad running XP that I'd forgotten about, so this evening I'll try formatting via a CardBus adapter. XP shouldn't have any trouble with FAT16.

You could try an external tool for the formatting, the free Panasonic tool (although meant for SD cards) does a good job on most 5-in-1 card reader/writers when operated from a command-line .. :

SD/SDHC/SDXC Memory Card Download | SD Memory Card | Digital AV | Support | Panasonic Global

Or : https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/