Ok, based on postings here and a PM, I tried to reflash back to the 05/06 image with the linux flasher running in an xterm window in a vmware player/browser appliance [firefox under ubuntu] combination under XP. Everything looked good, got the 'Suitable USB device not found' message, turned it on, got the 'USB device found at...' message, but then immediately, I got 'Unsupported board (id=0x0000)' , the flasher did nothing, exited and the 770 rebooted.

Ok, so the PM suggested using the old flasher. Maybe that was wrong. So I tried the new 2.0 flasher. No board error reported, and everything seemed to work just fine till about 33% of the rootfs image, I get 'Write failed after xxxxxxxxxxxx bytes', 'usb_bulk_write: resource temporarily unavailble', and I'm back at the linux prompt, the flash progress meter on the 770 is stuck at a third of the way, and the usb icon is still on in the upper right. So I pull the usb and pull the battery.

Now when I power up, I have a brick that does nothing but say 'Nokia' [till I remove the battery].

But I figure, well at least maybe the old flasher got installed. So I try re-flashing with the OLD flasher this time, and indeed, now the old one works -- no board version error messages. Again, everything looks fine, it gets all the way to then end, I get the 'Finished flashing' message, ready to hi-five -- only next it says 'NOLO_REQ_FLASH_FINISH: Protocol error', and no reboot. Just hangs with the usb still on in the upper right. So pull the usb again.

But this time, removing the battery, it seems to be back to the 05/06 image -- though the clock is now screwed up the way many have reported -- despite the fact that it was never screwed up for me when I had flashed the 05/06 image for the first time.

So it goes, at least I can run vnc again.

But the whole idea of using software in flash to do the flash? Sorry, but round these parts, we'd call that a brain dead hardware design.