my card reader finally arrived, and i could test it out : works brilliantly.
it is a
PNY SmartMedia (ONLY SmartMedia) card reader, bought on ebay from batteryspace, as recommended by
Stephanos (thanks !). their shipping to france is pretty ridiculous (grrr) but the dollar is low right now so overall it still is not too expensive.
it's not nearly as stylie as the original one i bought which does not work (i came across the notice from it a couple of days ago : i confirm, it explicitly lists smartmedia in the formats it will read, in two different places.
), but at least it works !