To hook up a palmsize 160G HD to your tablet.........working!

I was able to hooked up those big monster external powered external HD to the tablet thru the USB port. Those 3.5" weights about one ton desktop computer HD. Apparaantly NOBODY has succeeded, at least in itT, hook up those USB powered small footprint HD to the tablet. The notion is that those HD may draw too much current from the tablet and thus wont work. Today, I found out an interesting trick to make an external powered small footprint HD work with the tablet, first of its kind AFAIK, one has to power on the tablet while the HD is already connected. I am afraid it does not make any sense, but it work.

160G HD, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822242006.
F-F gender change, http://www.amazon.com/USB-Gender-Cha...6777949&sr=8-1
USB AC adapter, any one will do.
The split Y cable comes with the HD.

Hook the Y cable, one end to the HD, one end to the F-F gender adapter, use the straight end, the split off y-end should go to the USB AC adapter (This configuration is NOT negotiable). The nokia USB cable connects the tablet to the F-F gender adapter. Hook this up while the tablet is power off and HD is on. Now turn on the tablet, and put on USB host mode,

xterm
sudo gainroot
echo host > /sys/devices/platform/musb_hdrc/mode (turns on host mode)

you should now see the USB icon on the status bar, and fire up file manager, you would see your 160G HD. Apparantly, turn on the tablet while the HD is already on and connected to the tablet is a necessary step to make it work. Other tricks, 1) turn host mode off and then on,

echo otg > /sys/devices/platform/musb_hdrc/mode (turns off host mode)

2) plug the USB to a USB keyboard or laptop or another external HD to wake up USB mode on the tablet.

Pics:
The white adapter is the F-F gender adapter.
DiskUsage shows 156G, how do you like that ? Umm....start looking at my movie collection for my upcoming trip.
USB icon shows device attached.

How fast? small text file or jpg, eye blinking fast.

I am not sure, this particular palm size HD is difficult to work with, or there is a bug in the tablet OS. Comments?

Works on N810 too.

How big is the HD sizewise? A wee smaller than the N800. Yes, you can definitely put into your shirt pocket. Well, if it fell out ...........

Edit:8/11/08: Complete portable, suceed! The whole thing weights less than 1 pound, upto 6+ hr continuous HD use. see thread #48 and #53 for details and pics. Regarding how convenient to travel......It is pretty convenient when everything is in a totebag. Yes, a shirtpocket may be fine, as long as the HD does NOT jump out

enjoy,

bun
________________
N800/4.2008.23-14

Nice work Bun, what a great feeling to look down and see 156gb on the tablet!

You got it right. I left the screen on and have been gawking on it for several minutes by now.................... I think Qole once said to put PB's KDE 358 into Debian is going to need a lot of space, 8 - 16 G! NO SWEAT!

Umm, forgot to make a small declaration, this small little tablet is now having the biggest storage space in all my laptops. Period

bun

I have a powered usb hub and I can attach anything to it: harddisk, keyboard ...

I bought a powered USB hub for this purpose. It does not come with any instruction and I do not know how to use it. It has 2 USB, regular ones on one end, and one is marked with the icon lightning and red in color. I think this is probably the one should attach to power source? and then there are 4 tails sticking out. I tried to make use of it and it does NOT do anything.

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.13526

@nhanquy: can you guess how to use this thing?

Edit: I kind of figure it out by now. It is directional, so I have to stick it in at the end with the power end. Now I got it.



TIA,

bun

Bunanson, I have that exact same USB hub and it works perfectly with my 770! For this set-up I use a USB power-brick attached to the red power input, and the nokia attached to the black one (with a F-F adapter and a USB-micro usb adapter). Then the USB device I want to connect goes in any of the connectors on the the other side. Been meaning to put up some pics for a while, might do it later.

Thanks, I just guess it and it worked. here is the pic,

A big monster HD 200G and a palmsize 160G HD and a keyboard and hooked up to the USB AC adapter. Everything works! On DiskUsage, the last two rows are both USB HDs for a total of 360G, on my N800.

This is the USB hub I am using, http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.13526.

@Atarii: could you tell me a little bit about the USB power-brick? Is it good enough to handle my palmsize HD? And what OS and how to put 770 into USB host?

Now, I need to find something to get rid of the AC adapter
TIA,

bun

Wow! 300G+, what a power user, nhanquy!


bun

Hi
I've been playing around with this kind of solution also. I haven't had any luck.

You gave me the incentive to try yet more more time via my external powered hub.

It doesn't work. It's even worse that that. I have one of the OTG adapters and when I plug in my 1GB usb flash key directly everything is fine. I can read and write to it. When I put the same lash drive in via the powered hub - nothing - nada.
I had bought the externally powered hub to get my 2.5" drives working as above but a great idea down the tubes when nothing worked (Bun - we talked briefly in another thread a week or so ago about this). But it seems the problem is in the hub itself. It works fine as advertised on both my linux laptop and desktop but not on the NIT. I tried your trick by starting from power off but no symbol - nothing. So I guess it is the brand of powered hubs??? Mine is called "4 port slim hub" - model UH-374AP
http://http://www.sigelectronics.com/PC-Mac-Hardware/Computer-Accessories/UH-374AP-USB-2-0-4-Port-Hub
So I guess it also has to do with the type/manufacturer. I guess it off to buy one of yours... Really need this for my camera when I travel.

C

I am using 2008HE and used the linux flasher application to set --enable-rd-mode and --enable-usb-host-mode. I have tested with multiple USB card readers and cards, and they work perfectly, mounting /dev/sda or /dev/sda1. I hope to get external wifi adapters to work, but currently there is no rt73 drivers for the 770 kernel. I haven't yet tried an external hard-drive, but will later. The F-F adapter is also from dealextreme: http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.2646 Here is an annotated pic of my setup:



The AA-battery powered device I bought from poundland (UK shop), so it's not branded. I think it is meant to charge phones and devices "on-the-go" as it came with multiple adapters including the USB one shown. I think they have similar devices on dealextreme. Pic here: