D80 blinking CHA/CHR error
Friday night, after using a card reader to upload a bunch of bugs photos to my imac, I inserted my SD card into my d80, turned it on, and was faced with a blinking CHA (or CHR) on the LCD.
The last letter is difficult to figure out: it’s like a squared 8, with the bottom horizontal piece missing. A or R? Only Nikon knows for sure… though I guess I could could look in the manual, if I could find it.
Searching online yielded various tidbits of information, mostly relating to the probability that the card was not recognized by the camera – perhaps an unapproved brand? Well yes, RiDATA is not a recommended brand, but the cards have worked for over 15000 images in 8 months, so it seemed unlikely that the problem was that.
Cleaning the contacts didn’t (nor did they look in any way dirty). Reinserting didn’t fix it. Resetting the camera didn’t fix it. And oddly, my second SD card (also a 4gb RiDATA card) gave the same error. I thought perhaps it was the camera, but that was not a happy thought.
I tried again the next morning, hoping that it would magically work. It didn’t. I pondered some more, remembering that the error indicated some sort of card access failure. I checked the cards, noted that they were “locked” by a sliding switch, switched them to unlocked, and tried one in the camera: it worked! A rather simple solution, it turned out.
I was later informed (after a bit of chuckling) that the d50 noted on the back LCD that the card was locked – a feature sadly missing from the d80.
June 3, 2007 at 12:15 pm
Damn those pesky lock sliders!
June 3, 2007 at 1:13 pm
A quick note: After a quick consultation of the troubleshooting section of my D50 guide, it appears that it’s an A not an R, as Rs are represented by using a lower case version to avoid confusion. (Is this the first time my manual has come to any real use? :O)
E.g.
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On the regular LCD lettering shape as shown, an R would use the bottom left vertical and centre horizontal bars for an R:
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I like to be specific
June 4, 2007 at 3:07 am
Glad it worked in the end- was getting worried there
so how did you manage to lock BOTH your cards without realising it? or was this some practical joke from a friend
June 4, 2007 at 7:26 am
sam – yep
adam – gosh, thanks for that.
james – well, either inadvertent nudging or … operator error. you think I let my friends touch my SD cards? never!
June 8, 2007 at 11:30 am
Do you have any photo to show that
lock to us on the RiDATA card?
Would be interesting to see!
March 14, 2008 at 10:34 pm
My D80 just did that and I formated the SD card and all is well!
April 10, 2008 at 4:50 pm
I’ve just done the self same thing – a moment of panic, then a realisation that I’d locked the card, a quick google (the camera was still being used to import photos) and I discover your post and know that I’m right
Cheers!
July 8, 2009 at 7:16 pm
Thanks for the great post with a bit of humor…it solved my problem quickly!