thanks a lot, i didn't recognize before that i have to go in to host mode, stupid me ;o)

but now its working and i got a keyboard and a usb harddisk connected to my lovely 770.

my first impressions:
keyboard works fine, but sometimes it repeats one pressed button 7 times?
someone else has recognized this behavior?
usb harddisk also works fine, but be aware of mountig a 200gb harddisk into the users mydoc directory, the file manager seems to search thrue the whole harddisk, and doesnt responde for a 1 coffee and 2 cigarettes time.

but again thanks a lot, and i really have to says, this community is working great.
and so my 770 becomes more and more fun..


Sebastian

dose anybody want to post photos of there solutions?
Do you think it would be able to, at some stage hack a utility to enable and disable host mode without rebooting? or even set a value in an application to go into host mode on next reboot? This would make it more flexible when on the move and you want to plug into PC's and use USB devices but cant get back to a computer where you can run the flasher utility to re-enable host mode. Say your out with your USB devices and the 770 crashes. then you cant use them until you get home. If it was a difficult to swap between host and slave modes and you had a USB “thumbdrive” you would have the means to input files over USB in a way.

I rigged up a keyboard using the info from this thread. I think this is a more elegant solution, although it requires a little soldering. Here's what I did:

Ingredients (from Frys):
- BTC 6100 ultra-slim USB keyboard
- Vakoss USB mini hub (m# TC-212-AS)
- USB A to USB B mini converter

Opened up the Vakoss hub, and poked around with my Radio Shack continuity tester until I found solderable spots on the board for 1) +5V power, and 2) the power line back to the 770 (i.e., pin 1). I then soldered a wire (orange in the attached pic) onto the board to connect these two.

Then I enabled host mode, and pluged it in. Worked right off the bat!

There are several advantages to this rig:
- you get to plug and power more than one device from the hub.
- you could plug a 5V battery source into the hub to make it portable.
- it looks slick: the Vakoss and keyboard are the same metal/black color scheme as the 770!

Great work!

Months before the 770 actually shipped, once it was known USB host mode was available but unpowered, this gentleman had designed and tested the following hack (using a 9V battery instead of 3x1.5): http://spect.ath.cx/~spect/stuff/usb-power/
It would be interesting to combine your hub idea and his portable power source !

Good stuff everybody, I am probably going to get a big hub box like bigboote's and put in a voltage regulator (probably some switching type) and then have a line to the 770 too, so the whole lot can be powered from a car or a lead acid battery or whatever.

Gareth

A few questions:

1) How do you get the 770 to mount a USB HD, and has anyone gotten it to mount a USB thumbdrive? I tried a thumbdrive and it doesn't seem to autdetect/mount, so do I have to issue a mount command in xterm?

2) Is there a way to prevent the screen from dimming? I thought I saw a comment about this somewhere, but the ITT forum is getting so big I can't find it again!

3) I know this sounds insane, but has anyone heard of a way to get a USB mouse to work? Would be nifty when using the 770 with the keyboard for word processing, etc.

it is possible, i already did it.

* you have to be root (flash in root mode, in xterm type: sudo gainroot)
* you have to mount the harddisk in xterm:
make a directory like /hdd cmd: "mkdir /hdd"
mount the harddisk/ thumbdrive by typing: "mount /dev/sda1 /hdd" (normal it gets loaded as /dev/sda1, but it also can be /dev/sdb1 the number is the partition on the harddisk )
after you mounted the drive you can't the anything in the filemanager, and its good so. because if you mount a 200gb harddisk in the user directory your file manager will take 20 minutes to show all folders.
* then make a symlink of the folder you want to use to your homedirectory for using it with the filemanger (for instance your mp3 folder):
"ln -s /hdd/mp3 /home/user/MyDocs/"
now you should see the mp3 folder if you open the filemanager

I hope i have written als commands correct i dont have a linux box here in office.

This should work the same way with the thumbdrive.

Hope this was helpfull

Sebastian

I tried your suggestions last night and unfortunately the thumbdrive does not appear as "/dev/sda1" or "/dev/sdb1", or anything I can see. I tried various combinations of plugging before/after booting, etc.

BTW: This thumbdrive is detected and automounted by my Ubuntu desktop. Also, for the 770, I'm plugging the thumbdrive into my hacked powered hub, next to my USB keyboard.

Later, I'll try a USB hard drive I have. Maybe flash drives don't announce themselves to the OS properly?

Any ideas?

John

Followup to the USB thumbdrive question:

After re-flashing my 770 (system was somehow corrupted), I was able to mount the USB thumbdrive as per Sebastian's instructions (it showed as /dev/sda1).

It is not hot-swappable: you have to boot the 770 with the thumbdrive plugged in to the USB hub. Also, every time you reboot, you have to mount the drive in xterm.