OK I've pulled my head from the nether regions and plugged the SD card into the correct slot on the SD Proto shield. Now the SD library example, CardInfo, is being run and it recognizes I have an SD2 card and the wiring is correct. Problem is the thing still reports that the card is not properly partitioned with FAT16/FAT32. I know for a fact it is because I used the little magnifying glass to read up on what I'm experiencing. I've downloaded the SD Association's Ver.5 formatter and used both it and the resident Win8.1 format routines. I can read/write to the media with no issues via my laptop media card or with a simple USB interface.
Has anyone actually found a remedy for this? If so, please point me in the direction of the info. Most of what I've read postulates it has to do with the 3.3V vs. the 5.0V power requirement. This board comes from Arduino with the MKR logo on it and as such I would expect it was designed for use in a 3.3V system. I'm ready to spend the $22 on the Arduino MKR MEM Shield ASX00008 as my program needs to collect massive amounts of data in array form but I hesitate to do so with this original shield having issues.
Glad you got your last issue sorted out, just confirming when you plug the SD card into your PC and format it, that you picked the checkbox/dropdown for a FAT filesystem?
I'm waiting for my delivery of the MKR SD shield to arrive so that I can have a bit more of a play about with it.
I'm so sorry for being so lame in this arena. Once I put another card into it that was also known good I began the process of diagnosing why each of these two boards were giving different symptoms. One was recognized but reported as having no file system while the other wasn't even recognized. This is a proto shield and that is what I've done on it. I mounted several sockets for external sensor boards with little or no regards to the embedded wiring for the SD reader. The possibility of my having damaged the reader with my soldering technique loomed heavy in my mind so I spent the $22 for the proto board with the additional SRAM.
Voila! This board sees both SD cards and functions perfectly. So I have to conclude that once again, operator error was the culprit. Now all I have to do is find how to select the SRAM on this SPI bus and R/W to it for my programming needs.
I thank you all for not completely tossing me to the wolves.
I have three MKR SD proto shield boards and a couple of MKR mem shields. The mem shields boards work fine. All three SD proto shield boards are defective (received November and late December 2018). All three of them are missing the ground connection at the SD card holder on pin 3, counting from left and viewed looking into the connector with top of board facing up. I added a 30 gauge wire from the SD holder metal (GND) to pin 3 and all was well. The downside is that this is a wire right under the SD card and could get some 'abuse' when inserting/withdrawing card. Also, the close spacing of pins takes some skill. I've work designing / building proto types of electronic instrumentation for decades. Use a magnifier and very fine tip and solder. NOT the real solution. Arduino has been great about sending a replacement board, but the replacement was defective... When testing, try something from EXAMPLES other than CardInfo. My first boards said it was wired correctly using CardInfo, but could never find the partition info. This led to lost time. When I added the wire to pin 3, eveyrthing worked, including all other SD examples.