View Single Post
Posts: 631 | Thanked: 837 times | Joined on May 2007 @ Milton, Ontario, Canada
#304
After reading all through these posts I decided the easiest thing to do was create a home-brew auto-switching cable; it was actually incredibly easy to do!
1) By a USB Female to Female gender bender (formerly known as Bender the Offender)
2) Attach said gender bender to the the factory USB table that comes with the N800. Since I didn't want to get my cables mixed up in the future I put a bit of heat shrink over the connector and shrank it down so the gender bender wouldn't come off accidentally in the future.
3) Use a pair of pliers to bend up the metal top cap of the mini USB connector on the other end of the cable. There's a kind of "zig-zag" line where the two pieces of metal meet up, and all you have to do is bend them up slightly to either side to expose the copper pins.
4) Take a soldering iron and apply a tiny smear of solder between the exposed pins 4 and 5 near the back; if the solder beads up too much just scrape it down a bit with either the soldering iron or a small file so that it's fairly flat.
5) Bend the metal top cap back down into original position.

That's it! 5 minutes of work an $2 for a gender bender! Very easy!! Automatically switches and detects my USB keyboard, mouse, Flash Drives, Camera, etc! I'm going to do another "modded" cable up for my Dad's N800 at some point so if anyone's looking for pictures of how to do it I'll grab some then.