Sorry to bring bad news, but it looks as though everyone is resigned to it already, judging by the lack of recent activity on this thread.

Nokia has published a flasher tool for Diablo and Fremantle (N900), as announced here: http://maemo.org/news/announcements/...ablo_released/ .

Previous versions of the flasher tool included the options --enable-usb-host-mode and --disable-usb-host-mode. This version does not. I downloaded the package and read the Help.txt . The USB host options are not available for flasher-3.5 . This strongly suggests that a software method of enabling host mode is currently beyond the capability of Maemo engineers. That puts it beyond the capability of the rest of us too, I think.

There is just one grain of hope. Has anyone out there used R&D mode on the earlier tablets? I have never used it myself and do not care to try. There is something in the old wikis about using R&D mode as a way of entering host mode. Those references are obscure and ambiguous. They appear to say that host mode is automatically active when you are in R&D mode. On the other hand, they might just mean that you can use R&D mode to gain root, after which the "echo host" command would enable host mode on the earlier tablets.

My suspicion is that R&D mode does NOT include USB host mode on the N900. However, anyone willing to try can download flasher-3.5 from http://tablets-dev.nokia.com/maemo-d...-downloads.php and run it with the --enable-rd-mode option.

You will also need a power/data Y-cable to power the transceiver and a mini-to-micro adaptor, since the Y-cables usually come with a mini plug for a HDD enclosure.