I've been given a Nokia 6230(not the best phone in the world, but has the amazing ability to get a signal in the rear end of nowhere). Thanks Nan.
So back to the point, I bought a new 1gig MMC card from mobymemory, formatted it using windows as FAT and whacked it in, and the phone detects it as unformatted. tried it a few times now. Even tried FAT32 for the hell of it and no luck.
So what am I missing? the card is 'guarenteed' compatible and working fine. the firmware (v4.44) is new enough and the phone can handle 1gig flash according to droves of people on google.