Hi,
I've been N900 user for some time and like you still use it :-)

This is what happened to me:
Few days ago I've dropped my phone after which the touch screen stopped accepting my password. It did partially work, but not in the whole area of the display. I've ordered and replaced the LCD screen and the phone worked for some time (about 2hrs). Just as I wanted to backup my data - contacts, etc it started to have the same issues. After opening the phone one small resistor near the LCD connector fell out :-). The touch screen does not work anymore, but the phone does, including the keyboard. It boots and asks for a password. I can even get to the bootmenu and choose 1. default / 2. power / 3. nitdroid. But both default and power require the password and I've reformatted SD card that had the nidroid :-(. I'm out of my country for weeks and cannot access any of my backup and really need to get to the data and transfer it somehow.

That's where I need some help :-).

I'm thinking my only choices are:
1) Get somehow nitdroid installed in the SD card again so the N900 can boot it when I select it and hope it will not ask for a password or require touchscreen for interaction.

2) Get some low level program that can do block copy such as dd over USB and mount the file/disk on another linux machine once copied over.

Does anyone has any easier suggestions?

Will 1) work - no touch screen? Are there any instructions how to install nidroid on the SD card without actually using N900?

Anyone knows how to do 2)?

You're my last hope! Please help :-)

Thanks,
P.

Maybe with RescueOS: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=75369
You need computer with flasher-tool and usb-cable. And basics of Linux command line.

I beleive that you actually think of the whole top part connector.....
http://maemo.cloud-7.de/Gallery-N900...d/n900_01.jpeg
if you still have that SMD element you can try to solder it back. It can be done with regular tool if you are a bit skilled. Or take it to any shop to solder it back.

No, it's actually the little guy below :-). See the attached picture. I'll try to put in back somehow now that I have a backup of my data.

But thanks everyone I was able to copy all my data using the Recue OS! I'll go thank the author now.

BTW: Any tool than convert my contacts to Google Plus or Outlook or XLS/ODT format? Or at least a hint where are the contacts saved :-).

Murphy....
well, that one can't be fixed without the heat gun.

Bad luck, hm?

I do not know any tool to convert contacts.
It would have been best to just export them directly from the contact application and saved them as VCF files. But apparently you missed that. Or mayvbe got a system backup? There the contacts are also stored inside zipped archives (as db format).

The address book database is located
/home/user/.osso-abook/addressbook.db
But it is in a proprietary format. Nevertheless it is possible to manually extract your contacts.
Maybe it helps you...

Wasn't it SQLite db? Then just extract the records on a desktop.

Nope, unfortunately not.
Calendar is in sqlite, adressbook is some Nokia format.

--edit
but I remember to have given that hint one or two times more. And iirc one of those wanted to write a script to extract his contacts with most important info. So maybe use the search, find and ask.

So actually the address book is in Berkeley DB and I found a python script that wroked just fine for me here http://blog.tersmitten.nl/how-to-exp...directory.html

I just had to install all required python modules and create a vcards directory, it then created vcard per contant name in that directory.

Thanks everyone for the support!

Thanks for finding and sharing that solution.

Learned again something new about Berkeley formatted addressbook database (even this info was spreaded out years ago when searching with the right key words).