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CF Card for Marantz PMD670

Mike Phillips

Mike Phillips

I picked up a Marantz PMD670 in excellent condition a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately, it only has a 64MB CompactFlash card. The Kingston 16GB ultimate 266X card I bought will not work. The record light just flashes constantly. The card is good because I was able to format it in a computer, just as the PMD670 manual says is necessary for cards greater than 8GB.

If you have one of these units with a CF card 4GB or greater, what brand are you using? I hope I'm not totally out of luck, and I sure don't want to buy tons of CF cards just to find one that works. That sorts of defeats the purpose of getting a good deal on the recorder. :)
 
Mike, did you look up the tech specs for that unit online? I remember I wanted to get a few of those but we didn't have the budget. Depending on how long the thing was developed I guess it's possible it wasn't made to address past a certain memory location.
 
Bill, I can't find the specs you're talking about. The chart in the manual goes up to 1 GB. Unless someone reports a personal experience, I'll just have to try several brands.

The PMD670 formatted the card to 8GB, but it could not read and write to it. I thought that formatting the card in the computer would be a solution, but it wasn't.

The unit is quirky, but it's sweet. It seems a little "plasticy" for $1000 list, but I take good care of my equipment anyway.

Hopefully someone will come along with a suggestion. I'm going to try SanDisk and Transcend. If that doesn't work, I'll go for Lexar. It that doesn't work, I'll put it on eBay for someone who has cards and needs a new unit.

The hope is that I'm going something stupid, but I don't think so.
 
Perhaps call an authorized repair center before you invest in any more cards. It's possible there was a technical service bulletin issued for the problem you're experiencing. If not, maybe they can confirm an upper memory limit for the device.

It does seem strange that the Marantz would format the card and not be able to otherwise access it. You would figure if the card wasn't compatible for some reason you'd get an error and not much else.
 
It turns out that the PMD670 will not work with most cards over 1GB. Several people on the Internet reported that Marantz had flashed the firmware for them. (The unit has to be opened to flash the firmware. A chip has to be reprogrammed. It cannot be done in the field by most people.)

When I contacted D&M Professional, sure enough, they issued me an RMA, they're going to flash the firmware for free, and they're going to pay return shipping. Now I ask: When was the last time you had customer service like that? This unit is old, yet they're still providing this kind of support. With the flash, the unit will accept to 32GB.

Needless to say, I will continue to be a satisfied Marantz customer. When I need another product they make, it will almost be an automatic sale. Yes, I'm impressed.
 
It's great to hear about a positive customer service experience, especially considering the equipment may not be the newest in technology. It makes me consider their products for future purchases. It's not often that companies will assist with older products, let alone provide a free update and return shipping.

Glad you got it resolved, Mike.
 
D & M rocks! Emailed me the firmware update,now i'm good to go max 32 gig.That little 64 mb cf filled up too fast.Thanks for the post,Mike..
 
Re: CF Cartridge for Marantz PMD670

Sandisk Ultra III, 4GB; swear by it. Best Compact Flash cartridge $25 can get, and readily available at a Rat $hack near you.

Kingston memory cartridges/chips, from experience, are horribly unreliable and can develop bad sectors even after only a few uses (sometimes even whilst formatting or repartitoning.) And forget about your file system remaining intact if it's dropped or subject to any other sort of physical shock whatsoever. They're junk. Don't waste your money, save it for the more reliable Sandisk cartridge.

Lexar is okay, but definitely wouldn't be my first choice.
 
. Please note we recommend using the more reliable brands like Sandisk, Lexar or PNY with our recorders

A note from D& M. I only use Sandisk....
 
I got our old PMD 670 back from D&M Professional last week. No issue with larger CF cards now. Kingston CF cards are not good at all, very prone to issues. Use SanDisk CF cards, they are the best and most reliable. Lexar Media is in the middle of the pack.
 
I can't speak for Kent T, but the several times I've had to use Kingston cartridges, they've either become ridden with bad sectors after just a few (2-3) good multi-gigabyte write cycles, or the entire file system becomes corrupted beyond recovery if it doesn't self-destruct outright (the so-called "de-partitioning" effect.) Dropping them on hard surfaces, even inadvertantly, more often than not proves fatal and can make you lose a whole afternoon's worth of recording or photography.

I've not had any of these problems with Sandisk memory.

I suppose you may have gotten lucky and got one from a good batch. Basically, I've usually ended up swearing by Sandisk and swearing at Kingston.
 
I have bad sectors and at times file system corruption and even outright refusal to read. Not reliable or good. And ours aren't dropped. SanDisk never had issues with or with PNY or Lexar Media.
 
It's also not a good sign when FDISK recognises your multi-gigabyte storage device as only being 510 MB and partitions it accordingly (with FAT12, no less.) That means the on-board controller or the ROM on the drive/cartridge has gone bad. I've had this happen on at least three Kingston CFs.

I've also had a couple really old multi-gig IDE hard drives kick the bucket that way; one a salvaged 8GB Hitachi laptop drive and the other a 20GB Fujitsu.
 
My recorder got back last Tuesday. So far, so good. Even the Kingston CF is working. Let's see if it can hold up to some rigorous testing.

Does anyone know if a Nicad battery pack is available for it? The NiMH battery pack is available, but as I understand it, the NiMH battery will not charge while it is installed. The Nicad will.
 
Good luck.

Does it use AAs? Energizer (Eveready) makes a rather decent NiMH (1.2 volt) rechargeable AA, as the "Energizer Recharge" brand. I've had rather decent luck using these in my pocket CD players (except the I-River one, but it's a battery hog regardless.) You might be able to get away with using these, although you'll probably need to use an external charger (which they also make/sell.)
 
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