slavikko guessed it!

I spent an hour last night trying to rememeber what my password was, LOL. After first trying to figure out why I couldn't read it from two PCs using three different interface methods but I knew it worked cause my N82 recognized it!! haha

Finally hit me, didn't I put a password on this so my GF couldn't look at it?

All good now, though have my eyes on an 16GB card.

Is this related? read ossipena's post about halfway down...

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=38868

some on this post think it is to do with the battery under the kickstand....

I can definitely confirm it's a magnet which senses whether the backcover is on or off. i used the magnet on a generic case I bought for my N900. I was able to enable the SD card with the cover off by holding a weak magnet over the camera area.

So it looks like that magnet on the backcover is doing double duty. Keeping the kickstand snuggly held closed, and to tell the phone whether the backcover is on or off.

Additional note. There is a also a magnet and switch which are used to determine if the slide keyboard is open or not. It's located on the right side of the N900 well away from the backcover magnetic switch/sensor near camera. The use of these two magnet probably explain why there isn't a magnetic compass in the N900.

I have some thing like this whit my n900: The magnet is in place but the cover is always recognized as open. If i hold a stronger magnet on this spot, it has no effect. I think the sensor is defect.
Is there a way to tell the kernel by software that the cover is closed? Some switch in /proc/ or so?

Thanks!

There is an Xterminal command to tell if the status of the back cover is working or not. But can't remember

Hey there!

Is there some way via Xterminal or hardware hack that you could fool the N900 has the back cover on when it actually isn't? Problem is i think the sensor is kaput...i mean the magnet on the cover is still there but even when i close it it still doesn't detect anything! So would it be possible to like force the phone to believe the cover is on?

In fairness there really is no point of the phone detecting whether it is on or not...no benefits what so ever!

Thanks!

Automatically cleanly unmounting the micro SD card before that card is yanked from the phone seems beneficial to me. It makes me sad when I lose files to filesystem corruption.

I had the same problem and i replaced the magnet with magnetic tape aswell. Here is something i noticed:

A magnet only works with the sensor when in a certain angle. Seems
the magnetic poles have to be aligned in a certain way. I had to cut several pieces from diffrent angles so that the sensor would work.

As a summary:
When trying to replace the magnet don't give up if it doesn't seem to work at first. Find the proper angle for the magnet to work with the sensor and then cut accordingly.

Fair enough but surely a safely remove MMC option would suffice? I just think its caused more harm than good tbh

I've the same issue, do you think the warranty covers this reparation?