[UPDATED] I forgot to add some steps, sorry for that
Hi there,
I was successful making my 8Gb card bootable and store my photos on the correct partition, the camera works perfectly with iPhoto08 (yes, another MAC user).
I found myself forced to work on windows as none of the MAC solutions seemed to work for me, so using a Nikon D80 as a sdhc card reader :-) and working on windows xp with vmware this is what I did:
1. Start the SDM installer (last version: 1.75) and choose the card
2. Make two partitions with the option of the installer, this makes a small 2Mb partition (Fat12) and makes the rest of the card a FAT32 partition.
3. Press the "format" button, and the "make bootable" I think in that order, but not sure.
4. In windows explorer open the card and put the CHDK files there
5. Whithout closing SDM (not important I guess but thats what I did) press "swap partitions"
6. Now hit the "format" button again, as this time it will format the bigger partition
7. A command promt window will appear with information about the process, then you'll have to enter a name, I'm not sure if the name is important for the partition, but just in case I used "CANON_DC" as the camera does when formats a card.
8. Put the CHDK folder in this partition.
9. With SDM swap again the partitions in order to make the primary partition the small one and put there the DISKBOOT.BIN and vers.req files.
10. Close everything
11. Put the card in your camera (remember to "lock" the card with the slider)
12. It works!!! (At least for me)
My camera is the mighty 590 (I love it!!), SDM installer ver. 1.75, CHDK: a590-101b-0.9.1-678-full, with Windows XP Pro SP3 over vmware, The card reader I used... a Nikon D80. I tried to do the same on a Windows Vista PC, with built-in card reader but SDM software wasn't able to make the partitions (nothing happened).
I think thats all.
Please excuse my english, I'm not a native speaker, and my explanations as I'm quite a newbie with this camera and all chdk stuff (1 week with the camera , and this afternoon to make my 1 hour new 8Gb card)
P.S. Thanks a lot to the developers for such a great work!!!