A few years back the office got flooded and my N900, which was in a drawer ended up in silt and water.

I'd presumed it totally dead but today I happened to spot it, connected a usb charger and switched it on and it booted up to the lock code. Unfortunately although the touchscreen seems to vibrate to touches, it doesn't register the numbers.

So next I flashed an older version of Maemo on which boots to the first settings screen. Again it vibrates but doesn't register.

I would guess there's something haywire with the touch screen digitizer but before I trawl ebay for a new one, is there a way of getting past the settings screen and launching the screen calibration tool or a terminal?

It's the second digitizer I've had in that phone. Neither were terribly good and I was forever recalibrating the screen when it was 'working' before the flood.

I've had a quick disassembly, cleared out the silt but didn't spot anything terribly out of place or corroded.

" is there a way of getting past the settings screen and launching the screen calibration tool or a terminal?"

Nobody know?

What you could try to do is start rescue os and then edit the file: /etc/event.d/welcome

replace everything with this:
maybe you get a terminal. Don't really know after a fresh flash.

When you have a lock code you need to place a dbus unlock call before opening the terminal. If your sim card has a password remove it.

If I remember correctly first settings screen is time/date window and it is dialog type window so it will be always on top of other regular (xterm) windows. I would suggest to use rescueos, chroot to maemo and remove osso-startup-wizard.
If you want to callibrate you need to load /usr/lib/hildon-control-panel/tscalib.so or use tscalibrate.

Thanks everyone.

Halftux's suggestion gets a terminal up but as elros34 noted, you've got to also stop osso-startup-wizard from starting as it grabs keyboard focus.

Once you've got that renamed, the xterm starts in focus.

Unfortunately for my N900, if you 'sudo tscalibrate' it runs but my screen despite vibrating on each press is asking me to press closer to point 1. There must be something completely borked with the touchscreen. I do have an old touchscreen so I'll try swapping that in. I'd replaced that a few years back as it used to lose calibration regularly and the new screen fixed that.

I'll have another look to see if there's any corrosion or muck on the screen connections too.