Well, unfortunately I found out a simple way to brick the N800.

This applies to all the Nokia tablets - if while in root you (stupidly) write to /dev/mtdblock0 (and likely mtdblock1-3, too!) you will overwrite the boot loader and brick the device.

It seems like I accidentally did this (I can't fully be certain that was the cause since the tablet won't boot) when attempting to mount a jffs2 image. I think I might have accidentally transposed /dev/mtdblock0 for /tmp/mtdblock0. ( It might be a good idea for someone to change the Maemo wiki so that someone else doesn't also stupidly do that. I would also recommend using a script if you're going to try a jffs loop on the tablet - and checking it to make ceratin it's correct about 5 times before executing it! )

So now I have a nice N800 paperweight.

It can only be recovered with a serial cold flash, if at all. . . Why is it, that after a couple of years now, no one has posted anything on how to do a cold flash? Is it REALLY that difficult? Or is it that there are really that few tablet owners? I've done plenty of JTAG flashes on WRT routers and it's not that hard. So why is it that there is nothing here on serial/jtag stuff?

In the meantime I went ahead and ordered another N800 since Nokia seems notoriously slow in fixing broken tablets. . .

Since I don't think I can kill the dead one any further I'm going to work on making up a serial cable to cold flash the thing. The Maemo wiki has a little info on that, but since there is nothing substantial I have the feeling there has been little success. . .

If anyone has any suggestions besides sending the tablet to Nokia I would greatly appreciate it!