I have been down the persistent usb route, not much help as the connection is severed and the unit reboots when you select the mmc boot option (works for flash though). I have given up for now as I hope that perhaps a faulty sd card might be a culprit. Hard to say for now, I have ordered a new one and will test it when I receive it. OS cloned using penguinbait's tools boots ok but not to the desktop. I mean the n800 is stuck on nokia screen with the progress bar more or less 8/9 full. I can hear the screen click when I touch it and I can ssh to the device (it picks wifi network). Trying to start various services mostly succeds but the maemo-launcher segfaults each time... no other clues so far... This keeps on bugging me as it (mmc boot) used to work fine for months and all the problems started after the diablo upgrade.