Nikon D70s card problem - a design fault?

[Stuarte]

A friend now living in the French Alps bought a Nikon D70s in the UK about four years ago.  About 18 months ago the camera suddenly stopped working and flashed up an error message (CHA or FOR) saying that the card wasn't working.

Over the New Year break my friend asked me to check the problem out.  So I went onto the Internet and found quite a few references to this problem with this camera.  On returning to the UK today, I called my trusty local camera shop (ACE Cameras in Bath) but the guy said he had never heard of this problem.  Then I called Nikon UK and the guy said he hadn't heard of the problem; he advised sending the camera to them to check if the reader pins were bent.

So now I'm confused.  There are numerous references to this problem on the Internet, yet people in the business haven't heard of it.  Have other cameras had this problem too?

[Tony Beach]

Has your friend tried a different card?  I have had this problem with a couple of cards, and formatting them in the computer and then formatting them in the camera resolved the issue.

[Lisa Nikodym]

I had a fairly old (something like 3-4 years old?) Nikon D70 (not D70s) go bad in that way.  Multiple cards produced the same error.  It was intermittant at first, and after a few months it finally wouldn't work at all.  I didn't consider trying to repair it, but just replaced it with a new (different) camera, since I wanted a better more anyway.

Lisa