I don't want to spend any money to repair it.
I'd rather want to hack this blackbox and use it for something usefull. e.g controlling a robot via wlan, having a camera connected to it.
For me its a cheap developement-platform. Because it is fully working - except of the display. Even here it is possible to put a printed transparent foil on it - to have nicely illuminated touchbuttoms to control this platform. WLAN on/off, musicplayer playing randomly a playlist, starting robot-programs (scripts) and so on.

Therefor I want to create a nokia770-WSOD-Edition for it and bring that crap back to life. Should not be too difficult?


I will now activate #T2:12345:respawn:/sbin/getty -L ttyS0 115200 vt100
in /etc/inittab, reflash and see if I can serially login.
hopefully this is enough

greetings min

That's a fantastic idea... if you pull it off I'm sure you'll have plenty of grateful users and bring heaps of undead 770s out if their drawers :-)

It seems that spock already created the "n770 WSOD edition" that min and fpp mention, and this would indeed be what I need.

spock128, do you think you'd be able to publish instructions for your custom firmware? Assuming that this is a new rootfs, it probably would have to be a set of replacement files against a base rootfs (which cannot be distributed on its own).

Using VNC would of course make it easy to get WLAN up and running.

I basically followed the custom firmware instructions here: http://wiki.maemo.org/Modifying_the_root_image (this was a few months ago, so I don't remember exactly what I did).

The gist of it went like this:

1.Use the flasher utility to unpack the FIASCO image for OS2006
2.Mount the root image as an MTD device, and copy its contents to a temporary location (I used /home/maemo/root on my laptop, but it doesn't matter that much)
3.Make changes to the root file system as needed (see below)
4.Pack the directory structure back into an MTD image, and flash it onto the device.
(this was all done as root on my gentoo laptop btw, although it may have been smarter to use scratchbox - I don't know how to use it that well yet)

To enable usb networking, I followed the these instructions, but on my unpacked root image instead of the device itself: http://wiki.maemo.org/USB_networking...B_network_mode
I also added a symlink:
so that usbnet would start automatically.

I installed x11vnc by downloading the .deb from one of the repositories, and unpacked it into the root dir using "dpkg -x x11vnc.deb /home/maemo/root/". I don't recall if there were any dependencies required, but if so, you will have to install them manually as well. (dpkg can tell you what deps are required)

To get it to start at boot, I added a small script under etc/rc2.d/S99x11vnc (don't forget to chmod +x)
I also added fanoush's SDHC kernel and wifi patch, just for good measure. There was some trick to getting past the initial setup (since this is a fresh firmware, it will ask for things like time zone, hostname etc. on the first boot). I don't think I used vnc to do it as many things are still unset.

Still having problems to get a working WSOD-OS. So if I follow the guideline of http://wiki.maemo.org/Modifying_the_root_image
everything works without any error. I modified the rootimage like spock128 did but I come out with a rootfs.jffs2 which is 46,5 Mb instead 57,1 Mb (original) in size. If I flash this into NAND i always end up in a rebootloop.
All other attempts did also end in a rebootloop.
At the moment I don't need vnc. I just like to have a serial terminal or the usbnet working. I this is working everything else could be done via console.

@spock128: is ist possible that you put a working rootfs.jffs2 or better the
holeflash*.bin somewhere for download and give us the link?

I don't think we're allowed to redistribute official-derived firmwares .


How are you flashing the rootfs? You should be able to do something like:

./flasher-3.0 -f -r rootfs-usbnet.jffs2 -R

Mine is also 47MB ... idk why it gets smaller but it works for me

You're trying to use the serial port right? Have you enabled it using flasher already? (I didn't see it mentioned in your earlier posts):

./flasher-3.0 --enable-rd-mode --set-rd-flags serial-console (i think)

Why is not allowed to redistribute a modified linux version?
All this osso-hildon-whatever-stuff is worthless anyway without a working display. And Nokia distributed a missengineered one.

sudo ./flasher-2.0 -r rootfs.jffs2 -f -R is the way I flashed it via usb. The original flash-version is running fine:
sudo ./flasher-2.0 -F SU-18_2006SE_2.2006.39-14_PR_F5_MR0_ARM.bin -f
Are you using the same version?

The serial is just for additional debug-output i can read in gtkterm.
Later i want to use as /dev/ttyS0.

Thanx min

I'll try modifying the rootfs as well (am away from my N770 right now) ... regarding distributing complete images, this ought to be possible once mer supports the N770, shouldn't it?

Also mer could be a possibility for me. Is it working fine on your Nokia 770.
I also have a Nokia 800 working fine with OS2008. Is it possible to load a Nokia 770 OS 2006 version on it, modify it there - flashdump it -and put it back on the N770?
Configuring wlan or bluetooth by editing the configfiles doesn't work for me with that crazy hildon-osso stuff. Or is it better to use scratchbox for that?

I'm using SU-18_2006SE_3.2006.49-2_PR_F5_MR0_ARM.bin as my base image. I always thought you couldn't redistribute firmwares since I never see them, and Nokia makes you prove that you have a 770 before you can download them.

I do remember getting the flash to take being very finicky. Lots of battery-pulling, modifying, flashing and dmesg'ing until usb0 finally came up. I think there was some tapping on invisible setup screens too. Enough that I'm trying everything I can to not have to flash the rootfs again.

What's mer btw?