PalmPowerups reports good news for many Palm users. Treo and Centro users can already access SDHC cards allowing storage all the way to 32GB currently. However, other Palm users have been left out in the cold since the Palm OS for those devices has been limited to SD cards only. And that means 2GB maximums. PalmPowerups has released a free beta driver to allow these Palm devices to access SDHC cards. In addition to the ability to use larger memory cards, users will experience faster access, and card access will not shut off in low battery conditions.
PalmPowerups states:
Palm Inc has repeatedly refused to write an SDHC driver for
their handhelds. This has long been regarded as a lost cause by most
Palm owners. Luckily Palm Inc are not the only ones in power to help.
PalmPowerups to the rescue! We've been hard at work creating an SDHC
driver for your devices. It is very difficult and has been one of the
most complex projects we've ever undertaken here. It is made harder yet
since each individual device needs to be uniquely supported and
programmed for.
The PalmPowerups article contains caveats as well as instructions including getting the proper FAT32 driver if needed for your device, and how to get the trial version running on various platforms (note: this requires several steps depending on your hardware, so it probably isn't for the newbie).
As of this writing PalmPowerups reports the following devices are supported (with several more soon):
- Palm TX
- LifeDrive
- Tungsten T5
- Tungsten E2
- Zire 72
- Zire 31
According to the article the free beta will run unrestricted for 3-4 days after which it will begin to operate in read only mode, and at a greatly reduced speed. The cost to continue normally is $20 with a free upgrade when the release version comes out.
Nice to see a company continue to work so hard to support the Palm platform!
