That's what I did, I set the date and time, and went thru the desktops really briefly, and then powered off. Went back to the restart cycle as it powered down.

Weird I did that again...set the date and the time, and powered it off, it started doing the reboot thing again, and never fully turned off. So I disabled R&D mode and tried to start it up and kept getting the same error I described above. Went back to R&D mode and it started and I could scroll around the desktop, I went to Xterm and hit the sym/ctrl button and the screen powered off on me the keyboard stayed lit, but the screen faded out in a weird way, like slowly where you could see horizontal lines then it would go to black.

I restarted it again, and all my issues started yesterday when I would plug my phone into the charger and it would act as if it was charging but not recieve any actual charge into the battery. I plugged in the charger, and it immediately did the screen fade out thing again...also if at any time in R&D mode if I hit the sym/ctrl key it does the fade out.

Is this procedure safe with small children in the room?

Just don't leave them unattended with the device for their own safety.

Ok, here's a new recovery method which is easier as it doesn't need the flasher:

https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6350#c42

* take battery out
* insert USB cable (to boot device with charging boot reason)
* insert battery & put back cover back
* remove USB cable


-Jeff
http://wiki.maemo.org/User:Jebba

How can I reflash it?

Jebba, could you detail more on the process?

When inserting the USB cable, is the other end of the USB cable connected to a PC?

When putting back battery & back cover, is the USB cable still attached to the PC? (I'm kind of worried about that)

What happens after you do all these steps? Does N900 boot up normally and the boot count is reset? (so we can upgrade firmware normally via OTA/SSU)

Thank you.

Thank you so much for posting this, Jeff. It worked perfectly to unbrick my N900, and it's much simpler than any other method.

Ceefour: you asked for more details. Yes, the other end of the USB cable must be plugged in to a PC (mine was running Fedora Linux, but I doubt it makes any difference). You keep the cable plugged into the PC while inserting the battery and replacing the back cover. And yes, after this process you can boot the device normally, and everything is back to normal.

Sorry for bad English
n900 no initfs \o/ fix
comeon guys be smart .
in maemo flasher !
flasher-3.5 --enable-rd-mode -R . this bring the no initfs green white screen with \o/ .
Agian flasher-3.5 --disable-rd-mode -R
so it will move awaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyy and never see it agian only if u enable rd mode agian . U have a big help text file when u install maemo flasher ,u will find it on C: for windows devices .Goodluck it will work just inter the commands first and press enter to get a wait for a usb then when u see the wait connect your n900

you can leave R&D mode on all it does is turn off some watch dogs, my device was always in R&D mode and it worked fine...