[vox-tech] Sandisk ImageMate SDDR-05a (usb CF reader)

[Jonathan Stickel]

I've got an old Sandisk ImageMate SDDR-05a, a simple usb device to read 
compact flash memory cards, with an eject button.  It used to "just 
work" with RedHat 8/9 and kernel ~2.4.20.  I hadn't used it in months, 
and have since installed Gentoo and kernel 2.6.(1,3,5).  Now it doesn't 
work anymore.  Most times it detects the device and loads the 
usb-storage and scsi_mod modules, but no scsi partitions show up in 
/proc/partitions.  Sometimes they do show, but I can't mount them.  Here 
are the relavent lines in dmesg when I can see sda1 and try to mount:

ohci_hcd: 2004 Feb 02 USB 1.1 'Open' Host Controller (OHCI) Driver (PCI)
<snip>
ehci_hcd 0000:00:02.2: USB 2.0 enabled, EHCI 1.00, driver 2003-Dec-29
<snip>
usb 1-3: new full speed USB device using address 2
SCSI subsystem initialized
Initializing USB Mass Storage driver...
scsi0 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
   Vendor:           Model:                   Rev:
   Type:   Direct-Access                      ANSI SCSI revision: 02
USB Mass Storage device found at 2
drivers/usb/core/usb.c: registered new driver usb-storage
USB Mass Storage support registered.
SCSI device sda: 128128 512-byte hdwr sectors (66 MB)
sda: assuming Write Enabled
sda: assuming drive cache: write through
SCSI error: host 0 id 0 lun 0 return code = 6000000
         Sense class 0, sense error 0, extended sense 0
  sda: sda1
Attached scsi removable disk sda at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
scsi: Device offlined - not ready after error recovery: host 0 channel 0 
id 0 lun 0
scsi0 (0:0): rejecting I/O to offline device
FAT: unable to read boot sector

The card still works for my camera and with the Sandisk reader in 
Windows.  I can't think of much to try.  I goggled and found kernel 
patches for the SDDR-05b (no eject button), but not much for SDDR-05a. 
Does anyone else have this device?  Anything else I can check out?  If 
not, I'll just go to Fry's and buy a different card reader.

Thanks,
Jonathan