Yup...the Ultra II refers to the speed (transfer rate) of the card.

 

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So I transferred some Asian pop music onto one of my two Sandisk Ultra II 2GB CF cards from Frys.com, and it turns out, it doesn't read anything that contained Asian characters! I'm hoping that it won't skip them if they're burned on an MP3 CD. In my Mazda6, it plays all Asian files, but the text will just show up as "????????".

 

Well I just went out today to TigerDirect and purchased a whopping 8 gig CF card for $177 US or $203 CDN here at their retail store in Toronto. I am going to find out what is the capacity of files, folders etc of this slot in the car....

 

Good stuff, let us know how you make out Arun.

 

Yes, definately report back with you results. I have a 2 GB Ultra II unopened that I might take back if a larger card works. I bought 2 Ultra's from staples for $39 US each. Using one, waiting on the other.

 

Well guys, I loaded up over 500 songs in one folder this morning on the eight gig CompactFlash card. This represented the top 500 rock songs of all time and was just over 3 gigs. It worked well and all songs were recognized. The only issue was that it now takes almost 25 seconds for the car to "reading CF card" everytime I start the ignition before it will start to play the music were it left off. I suspect it will take 1-2 minutes to read a full 8 gig card. several two gig cards may be the sweet spot as far as a reasonable scan time when you start the car. I will fill the card with a full 8 gigs of music this morning and see what happens...

 

Thanks for the update Arun, much appreciated. It definitely sounds like multiple 2GB cards are the way to go.

 

Thanks for the update, you stated it takes that time to index when you want to continue where you left off... does that mean that if I don't want to continue, say I just want to select a new song when I start the car... is it immediate or does it still need to index the file structure in order to browse to a new artist/album folder then song? While it's indexing, is there any delay in switching to Sat radio or CD and is that instant switch? if that's the case, will it still index the CF card while I'm listening to the radio.

two more questions:

1.) If I stick in a CF card while the car is running does it automatically switch to the new CF card input? or do I need to select that?

2.) is there a light on the CF card slot that shows accessing? like my CF reader does at home?

 

What speed is your CF? I wonder if a faster CF like the Ultra II or Extreme III would help.

 

Well, My card is a 150X speed card so fairly fast...

No there is no light in the slot to show CF card activity...

The Car only indexes the file structure when you insert a fresh card or when you initially turn on the ignition...

While the car is running it appears to cache the file structure on the internal HD because then song selection, moving through folders and switching to Sat or CD etc is almost instantaneous.

 

Does anyone know of a quick way to rename files in a batch format? I have this cool program called TotalRename. I used it to add a number prefix (001 - , 002 -, 003 - , etc... ) so that I can order my songs the way I want on my MP3 CD for my last car, because the stereo plays everything in alphabetical order (by filename).

I tried using that program on the CF card to rename my Asian filenames, but it crashes when trying to access the drive. I don't care if I can't read the filenames (I can hardly read Chinese anymore anyway, I just like listening to the music). For all I care, I can have 000001.mp3, 000002.mp3, 000003.mp3, etc.

 

I found a solution to my problem! It's called Quick File Rename Personal Edition (http://www.filedudes.com/Quick_File_...oad-37821.html.

1) Click on the folder icon and select the folder where your files are.
2) Open the Advanced menu.
3) Check the "Starting with" box, leave the field next to it empty, and set the initial value to 1.
4) Hit OK.
5) Click on the Rename button.

Now, my files are named as so: 001.mp3, 002.mp3, 003.mp3, .... , etc.

 

^^ Awesome Goofy, thanks for sharing! I will be using that myself.

 

How is the title of the song listed when read from the CF card (is it based on the file name or on ID3 tags)? If it's based on filename, then I'm not sure I could work with that naming convention. All my ID3 tags are filled out, so if the system can read that, then your way sounds great.