Whew. This morning the USB adapters and gender changers I had ordered finally arrived, so I was all set to try out one of the various solutions I've been reading about here for weeks, and hook up my keyboard, hub, and various other things to my 770... yay :-)

(Side note for conspiracy theorists : four plug shapes and two genders... can you believe the USB standard was NOT designed by and for cable manufacturers ? :-)

Below is the account of much hacking, sawing, drilling, soldering, swearing and whatnot.

Warning : if you've read ALL the relevant threads in the forum, you won't learn much, if anything, in this one. All the ideas implemented have been described by others (and credited, I hope correctly) ; there are only minor variations (depending on what was scavenged, what had what plugs etc.). The main point is to confirm those solutions work, add a few pix to the gallery, and, well, rightful bragging after a day's work :-)

The Full Monty (aka the "thoughtfix contraption")

I first set out to build the "solderless" solution first described by thoughtfix, because, well, it's the easiest and most reassuring of all as it doesn't entail any modding of anything.

I had a basic, powered USB2 hub. Instead of the wall-wart I powered it with the battery pack that came with my iRiver H340 mp3 jukebox. I had never used it and all but forgotten it, but by a minor miracle its plug is exactly the right model for the power socket on the hub, so there really was nothing to hack (heh, take that, USB ! :-), just put 4 AA rechargeables in it.

The "Y cable" was in this morning's parcel. It is thankfully short and has a female A plug and two males. One male goes to the 770's host port through a female-A-to-male-mini4pins gender changer. This one is fun, it's two plugs linked by a swivel that twists every which way. It was also the cheapest available, but maybe not the most durable... The other male A fetches power from a hub port for the 770's. The female A goes to the hub's host port, which is a female B - this means there is yet another male-A-male-B cable in between.

What can I say ? It works, first try. I hooked up the keyboard and typed. I plugged in a USB key, it was recognized as /dev/sda1, and mounted it. Very anticlimactic :-)

I did have the 770 reboot on me at one point, as others have mentioned. Those AA cells are probably a bit old, and that USB hub is lit up like a Christmas tree (6 LEDs ! :-). As you can see in the pix below, it's a wee bit cable-heavy and spread out, and the battery pack is big. OK for home use I guess, but probably not something you'd set up in the train or at the local coffee shop :-)

http://www.internettablettalk.com/ga...oto/64/cat/504
http://www.internettablettalk.com/ga...oto/65/cat/504

The Savage Salvaging (aka the "bigboote" device)

At this point, while digging around the entire house for various things, I found two interesting tidbits :

- a broken radio-controlled car in my son's room. It was powered by a 4.8V pack of 4 cells, less powerful but much lighter and smaller than the battery pack, and by another small miracle it still had its charger ;

- a compact hub for laptops -- actually a USB1.1 trinket with a contractor's logo on it, but small, light and transparent. I saw that although it was unpowered the PCB had room for a power socket, just like bigboote's.

So I read up on bigboote's post and soldered two wires in places that would bring power both to the hub's and to the host's ports, unlike a normal hub. Then I had to hack a plug for connecting those wires to the power pack (from an ATX molex plug).

In this mode the Y cable is gone, and the hub has a male A on the host side, so it connects directly to the gender changer on the 770, making for a much less encumbered situation. In my view this an acceptable mobile setup, at the cost of reduced autonomy (but the power pack can be improved uopn easily). It is no less powerful though : just to get even with the ipodders I connected my iRiver H340 to the hub, it was detected and mounted without a hitch, and sudddenly I had 40 GB of disk space on the 770 (at USB1.1 speeds, but hey :-)

Note: spurious reboot here also when carelessly uplugging USB from 770...

http://www.internettablettalk.com/ga...oto/66/cat/503
http://www.internettablettalk.com/ga...oto/67/cat/504

With H340:
http://www.internettablettalk.com/ga...oto/68/cat/503

"I just want my keyboard" (aka the "lbattraw simplification")

Like lbattraw and others, I also wanted to be able to use just my keyboard without all the extra fluff, if necessary.

So with some trepidation I unscrewed and pried open my brand new Keysonic nano-keyboard (have I mentioned that it's cute too ? :-). Damn, but these things have become incredibly simple and empty since the last time I took one apart !

With my trusty Dremel I opened a small path on the side for another couple of wires and soldered these directly at the end of the keyboard's USB power wires. Through another homemade plug I can attach the same power pack as above to the keyboard, powering it and the 770's USB port at the same time ; now there is only the keyboard's cable, plugging directly into the gender changer on the 770. Autonomy TBD, but probably less power hungry than a BT device...

No reboot on plugging/unplugging this one, maybe I got lucky (or cautious :-)

http://www.internettablettalk.com/ga...oto/69/cat/504
http://www.internettablettalk.com/ga...oto/70/cat/504

Live via 770:

Congratulations and thanks for the tech pr0n.

But I'm beginning to think having to go through all these contortions is nuts.

OQO is exertering its pull on me again.

This concludes another episode of the ongoing USB host saga on the 770 :-)

With the accumulated wisdom of previous pioneers and very modest skills, I was able to get all three solutions working in an extended afternoon's work, which should be encouraging for anyone waiting to try it out...

Now I have joined the growing ranks of those impatiently awaiting the software hack that will let us use our keyboards without having the screen blank out every few words : Nokia, anyone, puh-leeze :-)

If anyone has read this far down, I do have a question : I was hoping that a change of languages in the virtual layout would change the real one's layout, but it didn't happen. So how can I get back my French key mappings ?...

Just for fun, one more photo that has nothing to do with the rest :
http://www.internettablettalk.com/ga...oto=71&cat=504

Neato!
Glad my little accidental discovery worked for someone.

I don't understand why your guys USB keyboards work fine and I have the stupid repeat key press problem on mine. I need to try a different keyboard in it I think.

And why mess around with these gothic cabling schemes, when there are a number of BlueTooth keyboards that work well?

- Dennis Brothers

Because we already all own USB keyboards.