David,
There are two parts to your post.
For the second part regarding using a 2 GB card on T3, can you elaborate a bit, what did you mean when you said you could not get the card to work on the T3 ?
Attempting to duplicate your problem, I took out my T3 which had had a very long rest, charged it overnight, and put a 2 GB SD card from my new TX into the T3. The card has Filez in the Palm\Launcher folder. On the T3, I started Filez on the card and browsed the card. I can see all folders and files with no problem, including a long list of mp3s in the Audio folder (see a photo of the T3 showing files on the 2GB card here -
http://nordin.kembali.net/mypalm/T3_filez.jpg.
I then run RealOne Player on the T3 and listened to some mp3. While composing this response, I listened to several mp3s for more than 30 minutes now, using the T3 and the 2 GB SD card. Everything seems OK to me. Here's a picture -
http://nordin.kembali.net/mypalm/T3_realone.jpg
The card I use is Kingston Technology 2GB.
With regards to the first part of your post, it's been a long while since I used or synced my T3 to the laptop. My Oct 2003 T3 has been in storage ever since I moved to TX in Oct 2005. However, for the two years that I actively used T3, I could not recall any problem completing hotsync to the laptop using a USB sync/charge cable.
If I were to face the same problem, the first thing I would do is try to identify which of the hotsync conduits is or are causing the problem. I would go to the Palm Desktop/HotSync/Custom/ and change the Conduit Action for all conduits to "Do Nothing", except the top one (whatever it is). I would leave this to "Synchronize the files" or something similar to that effect (some conduits have different action descriptions).
I then would sync the PDA. If the sync completes without any problem, then I would consider that particular conduit is OK. I would then change the Conduit Action setting for the second conduit in the Palm Desktop list and repeat the sync.
If any of the sync cycles failed, I would put that particular conduit under a suspect list, change it back to "Do Nothing" state and proceed with the next conduit until all in the Palm Desktop list are done.
When completed, I could either delete on the PDA the application(s) with the "bad" conduit, or if the application is very dear to me, I would continue narrowing the problem identification process. If that fails, I would simply leave the conduit in "Do Nothing" state. This way I could still use the application on the PDA, but it would not cause problem with my hotsync.
The only problem then would be I would be in a great deal of stress should I lose the PDA data due to battery depletions of resets.
To mitigate the risk, I would use a backup-to-card utility to backup that application and data to an SD card. Or if I do not have the utility, I would simply use a file copy utility to manually copy the application and data to the SD card.
The above is quite a lengthy response. Hope that helps somehow.
http://nordin.kembali.net
Handera 330 (2001)->Sony Clie SJ30 (2002)->Palm T3 (2003)->Palm TX (2005)->Palm TX (2007)