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Palm Zire 72 Whining noise solution

Freeclock

What it does, in the words of the author:

"The buzzing noise we are all familiar with seems to be directly related to the Pixel Clock on the XScale LCD controller (NOT directly related to the system bus or CPU speeds!) The Zire 72 sets the Pixel Clock to 6.5MHz.

The solution employed by FreeClock is to directly modify the Pixel Clock frequency to raise the frequency above the threshold of hearing. A Pixel Clock of 13MHz is high enough to achieve satisfactory results. This is done each time the clock is modified and each time the Zire resets the display."

This saved my Zire 72 from ending up in a drawer permanently.

However, it's a hardware problem and Palm should replace them. The reason I didn't return it is because there are so many defective ones (as evidenced by this discussion). I figured my chances at getting a non-screeching unit were pretty slim.

Freeclock is a little unstable. I had to install it, launch it and tick the box for silencing the screen, select 'remember settings', press the Home button (crashes), reset, launch freeclock again (don't fiddle with the other settings, this makes it crash), and press Home. Don't touch it after this and it'll be stable.

You have to relaunch it each time you reset.