X6x SD slot and SDHC Cards

[Ken Fox]

I just received an 8gb PQI-branded SDHC card for a digital camera, bought for the ridiculously low price of $33. I assumed that it would not work in the card reader slot of my X60, based on prior threads I've read on this forum. I had purchased some USB SD/SDHC compatible readers to use instead.

Out of curiousity, I put the card (with some files on it) into the card slot on the X60, and surprisingly the card was recognized and the files were readable.

Has a new driver come out that allows backwards compatibility with these cards, or are there just some SDHC cards that by coincidence work?

Up until now I have avoided SDHC cards due to presumed compatibility issues with the card slot on the X60, but I am now surprised to see that maybe this is no longer an issue. I am running XP on this system.

[ryengineer]

Microsoft released a patch to fix the issue, you probably have it installed on your thinkpad:

The 923293 hotfix adds support for SD High Capacity memory cards in Windows XP

[Ken Fox]

Microsoft released a patch to fix the issue, you probably have it installed on your thinkpad:

The 923293 hotfix adds support for SD High Capacity memory cards in Windows XP

I think it is worth posting this because up until now, searching on this topic (on thinkpads.com and also with google) produces only old threads indicating there is a continuing problem, plus one thread (I think) indicated it had been fixed for machines running Vista.

As a side issue, I wonder if this MS fix works for USB memory card readers that were designed for SD but not SDHC cards. I ask this question because I ordered a USB SDHC card reader from a cheap doodad supplier (meritline.com) that was supposed to be designed for SDHC cards. What I received, a few days ago, was a multi flash card reader that on the packaging stated it could read SD cards, but no mention was made of SDHC cards. In defense of the merchant, when I wrote them about this they suggested I try the product and if it didn't work, that they would correct the situation.

I plugged the USB reader into my desktop and tested it on the same 8gb SDHC card referenced in my first post; it worked fine and was recognized by the desktop.

ken

[mfbernstein]

KB 934428 may be needed in addition to (or instead of) 923293 (my 8GB SDHC cards didn't work without it). See DigitMemo's instructions and download for more info.

Regarding USB SD adapters, I doubt drivers will help for SDHC. Most of these just appear as generic USB storage devices to Windows, so short of a firmware update from the vendor, you're not going to see new features.

[tarvoke]

having tried many hotfixes (including, yes, those ones they only send you on request) on several different windows os, I have to say it can still come down to the particular sd card and the particular reader.

extended saga here.

but in short: a given card works fine in one x61t built in slot (under xp tablet, xp64, vista, and linux) but not in another x61t built in slot (again various os tried).

EDIT: could be interesting to compile a list of hardware IDs of which readers are more tolerant than others. sadly, I no longer have access to the x61t that did not like my sd card, only the one that does. /EDIT