How is PCMCIA hard drive format different from default FAT16 "msdos"?

I am attempting to format some CF cards for use in an OLD digital camera (1995 Kodak DCS460). The camera uses PCMCIA Type III. It came with a Type III 260MB hard drive. If I format the CF card under Linux or Windows, as FAT16, the camera can see the card, and will write to it, but the resultant file won't be visible, and has to be recovered with a data recovery scanning tool. One thing I tried was to dd the image of the 260MB hard drive, and write that to a 512MB CF card. With this image, the camera can correctly write to the card, and the images can be seen and copied off directly in a card reader. The partition of the 260MB hard drive shows as FAT16/msdos, same as the one I formatted directly. There is also a folder with a driver in it from the hard drive image. I copied that to a 1GB CF card formatted as FAT16, but got the same behavior of unreadable files. Other users of these cameras report being able to use them with up to 2GB PC card hard drives, so I don't think 260MB is the limit here. Any ideas what might be different about the FAT16 formatting that came on the PCMCIA hard drive vs. the FAT16 formatting applied by GParted and other tools? Any suggestions on tools that can show me things like file allocation tables, in case these are being handled differently between the two formats? Edit: One new piece of information I have: the 260MB image that works fine in the camera has these properties: Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type /dev/sdb1 * 34 509183 509150 248.6M 6 FAT16 I cannot create a partition that starts on less than sector 2048. I tried fdisk and gparted. Edit 2: I found that, with the dos compatibility flag set, I was able to create a partition starting at 34. I used fdisk to create a 2GB partition (max for FAT16) on a 5GB PCMCIA hard drive and set it to type 6 and bootable. I then formatted it as FAT16 with gparted. In a Linux machine or a Windows machine it shows as a fine 2GB drive. The camera says it's not formatted. Edit 3: After building a Windows 98SE system, I was able to use the camera's original TWAIN driver to manage it. This allowed me to format cards in the camera. After formatting, these cards (up to 2GB) work fine in the camera and can be directly read in PC readers. I am still not sure what is different about their format layout. One thing that does clarify things a bit, though, is how the 5GB disk acted in the camera. It would not format there. I tried creating a 2GB DOS/FAT16 partition on it using fdisk in a Linux laptop, and then formatting it in the camera. The format would fail, and the card would then have a 4.7GB partition on it. I guess "format" in the camera is actually partition-and-format, and it uses the whole drive even if that results in something beyond the capabilities of FAT16. dd-ing the format from a 1GB CF card that was formatted in the camera does work on the 5GB drive (although with only 1GB, as expected). fdisk says the layout of the 1GB CF card is: Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type /dev/sdb1 63 2014991 2014929 983.9M 6 FAT16 Although I initially created a partition starting on sector 34, the camera format starts at 63. lsblk says the file system is vfat. I had been trying FAT16. The 512MB CF card was similar (starting on sector 63 and with vfat for the FS). So, in a nutshell, I guess the larger drives (> 260MB?) need to start at 63 (even though lsblk says they're still using 512 byte sectors), have one primary, non-bootable, FAT16 partition, and be formatted with vfat.