Heya! Like phg, I just got an N900 (today!) as my first smart phone after using (and losing) flip phones for the past 10 years. Unlike phg, I got a "for parts" unit off of ebay for cheap and I'm hoping to repair it.

From what I can tell, the only things wrong with it are the continuous-booting-while-"charging" and shutting-off-after-the-Nokia-splash-screen problems. There's also a slight blemish on the lcd but I'll get to that when I can. I poked around with rescueOS and noticed that the battery is being read as "full" and charged at "0%" (I thought ahead an got an external charger too), so I'm going to open it up tomorrow and have hunt for loose connections.

If worse comes to worst I'll wait to get a slightly better unit and already have a husk to harvest parts from if I need to.

Edit: just to say I got it up and running from the "cold flashing" method!