could you please point me in the direction of where to download all those files please. And are there any noob firendly instructions out there too? I know a bit but not a lot, and the bits I do aren't working so a step by step would be good if one exists.
my note was not being recognised by odin only by adb in recovery mode, and not in 'download mode'. I tried a zip file that I put on an sd card which looked promising, thought it was an official rom, got it from xda, but it told me to go away because it wasn't signed
I'll be buggered if I can find the official ones anywhere. Samsung hides them well. If a Gingerbread rom is available too I might just
use that. Save the hassle for when I have more time to sort it all. I'm guessing my phone is one with the dreaded !problem' that bricks it when updating. I did think the official ota update wouldn't be a problem though. Never bothered to do any tampering except to gain root access and that was it.

Sorry for the extra long post, but I will just say that using my n900 again has been great. only niggle is the web browsing isn't quite as fast, and there's not an app available for a couple of things.