Hi guys,

Ok. I know this has been asked dozens of times before and I appreciate all the responses about why an SD card can and cannot be "seen" in the N900, which is my problem too. But after all my research and testing, I've come to realise that this is beyond the "missing magnet" problem. Something else is wrong, and it's most likely to do with the magnet sensor to say whether the back cover is on or off.
I've waved magnets behind the area for this, and nothing mmc related shows up in $lshal or $dmesg.

The camera cover is working, but not the SD card sensor.

What I want to know please, is how to create the /dev/mmcblk1p1 folder? I can see mmcblk0* though

Everytime I've tried to umount or mount or fdsk, etc the mmcblk1p1 folder, it keeps coming back with "no such file or directory".

Does that folder get created automatically by the kernel when it senses a memory card?

I've tried several mSD cards from 2gig to 16gig. All work and format fine as FAT32 in Windows XP and I am able to use them on the PC fine. But when I put them into the phone - I get nothing - nada.

Any ideas on how to force the kernel to ignore the magnetic sensor and just read the SD card regardless?

Thank you

This /dev directory is the exception from the rule, that everything would be a file. In this directory there are nodes,for the devices. Usually they are created on-the-fly by the kernel and its helper applications like hal.

The manual creation of /dev/mmcblk1p* device nodes with 'mknod'-command for the partitions of your external card, will not get you anywhere, because the underlying applications do not automatically start when detecting a node in that /dev directory, but rather vice versa the underlying applications do their magic and finally a device node is created in /dev,

There seems to be no way around the hardware detection around that infamous magnet.
Besides the magnet issue, you could check the contacts of the card reader for integrity (broken, malformed or worn down)

For software debugging you could try to give more information in giving the output of these X-Terminal commands. You need 'rootsh' package installed for these to work.

SOLVED !!!

Ok...

BACKGROUND
1. Bought 2nd hand N900 and everything came as stock-standard with original pr1.2 Maemo.
2. Upgraded to pr1.3.
3. SD card not seen since I bought it
4. Tried "everything" I could find on maemo.org, talk, etc
5. Yes checked magnet (it already had it)
6. Yes, tested camera slider and camera hacks using gconfig
7. Yes, tried a stronger magnet with and without cover
8. Yes, tried different SD cards, including old 128meg ones
9. Yes, tried FAT32, FAT and even NTS formats

Nothing worked.

I even tried to force create the mmblk1* folders in /dev.

As you said - nothing!

Until I read this !!
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=85658
and this ...
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=94463
and this (this one solved it for me) ...
http://talk.maemo.org/archive/index.php/t-72675.html

SOLUTION
(at least for Kernel-Power users. There is also a CSSU solution, but could not find a .ko file replacement for the original pr1.3 version)

1. Upgrade or download up to the latest Kernel-Power (v53 as at this post)
2. Have rootsh
3. Make a copy of the existing /lib/modules/2.6.28.10-power53/omap_hsmmc.ko kernel file. I renamed it to omap_hsmmc_ko.BAK
4. Replace it with this ...
https://www.dropbox.com/s/v4mglc74ciypzog/omap_hsmmc.ko
(get it whilst the link is still live!)
5. Reboot and voila! Memory card is seen.

Sure.. the back cover sensor is the problem, but without having to take my phone apart to check, I think this is better anyway. I can use the phone with or without the back cover.

The file at https://www.dropbox.com/s/v4mglc74ciypzog/omap_hsmmc.ko is not getting downloaded. Can you please check?

It works for me.
Try https://www.dropbox.com/s/v4mglc74ci..._hsmmc.ko?dl=1 or https://web.archive.org/web/20160916..._hsmmc.ko?dl=1 .