Canon EOS 40D

[SNFStardust]

Hello All,

I have a Canon EOS 40D that I purchased when they first came out. I haven't used it in probably 5 years and decided to dust it off. But it will not turn on. I've charged all the batteries and tried them all. nothing. I even replaced the eternal battery. Still nothing. Does anyone have any advice as to what else I could try. I have a bunch of lenses for this body and would like to use it if possible. Any advice on fixes? Or another compatible body I could purchase?

[RobertTheFat]

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@ebiggs1 wrote:

"I've had the occasional card not want to format in-camera and instead formatted it on a desktop PC."

The wisdom from the "experts" suggest you never use anything but the camera to format your CF cards. However, I have not seen any difference or problems using a Windows computer to format them. And, sometimes it will fix a problem!

I have no idea whether this is true for a Mac, or not, since they are so screwy to begin with.

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As I understand it, the reason for preferring to format the card in the camera is that if the computer defaults to a different version of the Windows file system, the camera may not be able to read it. But assuming that the computer can produce what the camera can read, the computer may do a better job of formatting than the camera.

[Waddizzle]

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@RobertTheFat wrote:

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@ebiggs1 wrote:

"I've had the occasional card not want to format in-camera and instead formatted it on a desktop PC."

The wisdom from the "experts" suggest you never use anything but the camera to format your CF cards. However, I have not seen any difference or problems using a Windows computer to format them. And, sometimes it will fix a problem!

I have no idea whether this is true for a Mac, or not, since they are so screwy to begin with.

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As I understand it, the reason for preferring to format the card in the camera is that if the computer defaults to a different version of the Windows file system, the camera may not be able to read it. But assuming that the computer can produce what the camera can read, the computer may do a better job of formatting than the camera.

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Correct!

This was a real problem back when some computers were 32-bit, and some were still 16 bit.  You had two different file formats FAT-16 and FAT-32 to worry about when it came to removable media.

[ebiggs1]

I don't do it a lot because it is just as easy to use the camera but all the times I have done it, I never saw a problem.  Again Windows machine, not saying Mac's are OK.

[Waddizzle]

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@ebiggs1 wrote:

I don't do it a lot because it is just as easy to use the camera but the all the times I have done it, I never saw a problem.  Again Windows machine, not saying Mac's are OK.

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The problem was far more acute in the 2000's, when there were lots 16-bit machines running Windows 95/98, and both 16 and 32 bit machines running Windows XP/Vista.  The 32-bit machines could create either FAT-16 or FAT-32 formats.  Add the NTFS file system into the mix, and you had a wide open door for Apple to make a comeback with their Mac PCs.

With everyone running 32-bit and mostly 64-bit machines, the issue of selecting a format for removable media has all but disappeared.  But, there are other details associated with FAT-32 formats, such as block size, sector size, etc.