The Yamaha QY100 is very specific about which types of Smart Media Cards it can use. Here’s what to know to ensure you select a compatible Smart Media Card for your device and some other very useful information about them.
The card must be 3.3V
There are two different types of Smart Media Cards on the market, 3.3V and 5V. These Smart Media Cards look identical, so it is very important to confirm that the card is 3.3V before making a purchase.
Acceptable card sizes
Smart Media Cards with any of the following capacities can be used: 2MB, 4MB, 8MB, 16MB and 32MB.
Larger capacity cards can work but must conform to SSFDC Forum specification
Smart Media Cards with higher capacities can be used as long as they conform to SSFDC Forum specifications.
SSFDC stands for “Solid State Floppy Disk Card.” The SSFDC Forum is an organization which develops and defines the standards for these memory cards.
Sometimes it says right on the card whether it conforms to the SSFDC Forum spec.
Bigger isn’t always better
Note the larger the card capacity and number of files contained on the card, the slower the load time will be.
When loading a song from my 16MB card, the task takes around 10 seconds (from pushing the Card button on the device, to loading the file, and returning to the project screen). While on the other hand loading a file from my 128MB card takes around 30 seconds. This added delay can be a bit of an annoyance, so it may be beneficial to consider acquiring multiple small capacity cards rather than one large card.
It doesn’t seem like the QY100’s files eat up too much space either. At the time of writing this I have 50+ files saved to my large Smart Media Card, and it only takes up a miniscule 2MB. If I knew this going in, I would have probably opted for buying multiple 2MB or 4MB cards rather than the large 16MB and 128MB cards I have now.
Avoid subfolders, keep save/load times fast
Smart Media Cards allow you to nest subfolders within the main folder. On the surface this seems like a handy way to organize file but be aware that nested folders can increase the time it takes to save/load a file within the subfolder.
Saving/loading in a nested folder seems to take around 1.5x longer than the main folder. The speed can become even slower when subfolders are nested within other subfolders. So, if you need quick access to files, it’s best to keep those in the main folder. Lesser touched files can be stored in subfolders if desired.
Get a Smart Media Card reader
Getting a USB-Smart Media Card reader is a great way to backup all of your files to your computer. I have got a lot of use out of this cheap INDMEM multi-card reader of mine. If I were to ever run out of space on my Smart Media Cards, I could just offload the files to my computer to free up space. This type of reader is also perfect for transferring multiple .Q1P files to you device with ease rather than individually transmitting .syx files over a MIDI-USB connection.
Write protection on Smart Media Cards
You might notice that many Smart Media Cards come with metallic stickers which can be placed on the card. These stickers are not just for looks, they actually engage the Smart Media Card’s write protection. These stickers can be added if you want to protect data on the card from being overwritten, and removed to turn the protection off.
The photos below demonstrate what the sticker looks like when applied, and the write protection screen you will see on your QY100 if you attempt to write to the card.
