160G palmsize HD to N800.......working!
 

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 :D ? 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

Re: 160G palmsize HD to N800.......working!
 

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

Re: 160G palmsize HD to N800.......working!
 

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

Re: 160G palmsize HD to N800.......working!
 

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

Re: 160G palmsize HD to N800.......working!
 

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

Re: 160G palmsize HD to N800.......working!
 

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.

Re: 160G palmsize HD to N800.......working!
 

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

Re: 160G palmsize HD to N800.......working!
 

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


bun

Re: 160G palmsize HD to N800.......working!
 

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

Re: 160G palmsize HD to N800.......working!
 

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:

http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/726/settl6.jpg

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:


http://img503.imageshack.us/img503/7...l253742rg0.jpg

Re: 160G palmsize HD to N800.......working!
 

I'm still having problems... (Story of my life ;-) ). I used my external cell phone charger (that's how I would use it on the road - it looks similar to your battery one - just a different model) but nothing. I did take the message from USB control if anyone's interested:
USB controller mode: a_wait_vfall
Bus 001 Device 001:ID 0000:0000

Does that ring a bell with anyone?

C

Re: 160G palmsize HD to N800.......working!
 

cyber, yours doesn't look like a powered one! am I wrong ?

@bun : Can you plug the power-input end of the hub to a PC usb port to draw power instead of the AC adapter to see if it still works?

Re: 160G palmsize HD to N800.......working!
 

I popped my N800 into USB Host mode using the USBControl and was able to have Canola see my large MP3 collection on a 350Gb external disk. I used the simple mini-USB adapter discussed elsewhere in this forum. I had to mount the disk to /media/mmc2/floppy for Canola to see it.

Seemed to work okay, but with a large collection it can take quite a while for Canola to log in all the songs. With that song collection and the nice library of Internet rradio stations in Media Player, my N800 is spending more time teathered to my stereo as the house music system and less time walking around with me!

All this was with an externally powered USB HD, so much respect to those of you who were able to get this working with portable power!

If you are willing to spend the extra bucks, you might consider the Socket Mobile Power Pack (http://www.provantage.com/socket-ac4...4~7SOCK04X.htm). I've used mine pretty successfully for several years to power my N800, iPod, external speakers and several other things. It is always nice to have that extra power on hand!

Re: 160G palmsize HD to N800.......working!
 

@nhanquy
Yes it does come with an external AC adapter that plugs in the end - 5V@1A and I used it. I also tried the trick that the others have suggested by using an external battery pack - not the same as pictured but same concept. Nothing seems to work although any of these methods work fine on my other Linux machines so I know it's not incompatibility. The whole things works if I use my 1GB usb flash on the NIT with or without the powered hub. Not giving up yet because I know it should work fine...

C

Re: 160G palmsize HD to N800.......working!
 

I'm using one of these octopus hubs like Atarii has (or something close, but involving more soldering...) Main difference is I'm using it with no adapter; the mini-B is soldered for OTG, and rewired for the host side of the hub. (Since mine had only one host connector, that's become the power connector.)
This should be equivalent to Atarii's setup, but with an OTG-wired adapter (e.g. from jolouis) instead of the female-female rig.

Oh, and I'm using one of the iogear GMP1001W6 USB powerpacks that were on buy.com for $20 a while back for power.

Result: It's sometimes finicky about timing. It makes a difference whether you plug the battery pack first, or the OTG. I think the best config was to plug the OTG, then plug the battery, but... now I can't reproduce the problem. :mad: It works either way. But it would get hung up in states waiting for rise or fall, if things didn't go right... Hope this helps those having trouble.

Re: 160G palmsize HD to N800.......working!
 

I looked at the pictures again and maybe there is a difference. I am using a OTG miniB to USB connector and not a standard cable with a F-F adapter. It works fine with the USB flash drive however...
Is there a difference between the two ways of connecting it?
Here's my connector: I'll have to get the picture later as it looks like the company's web site is down (or they went out of business because the connector doesn't work ;-) )

C

Re: 160G palmsize HD to N800.......working!
 

I guess that's not it. Bun replied with the answer as I was writing...

C

Re: 160G palmsize HD to N800.......working!
 

First, you have to see the power light on the HD light up when plug into the hub. If that does NOT light up. You do NOT have enough power. If that light up, then you may be able to keep on trying. Mine the light goes on and I can "feel" the HD is spinning.

bun

Re: 160G palmsize HD to N800.......working!
 

The light is on OK - nice and steady and I can hear the drive. If I then plug it into the laptop everything is fine. Unplug it from the laptop and nothing. The flash drive works fine that way but not the drive. Interesting....

The only thing I can think of is the hub requires a little too much power??? even though it's powered externally by either the AC supply or my battery pack and the light is on and steady. Does that sound logical? I guess I'll have to buy, borrow or beg another hub from my friends and see if another brand helps. I can't think of anything else to do...

C

Re: 160G palmsize HD to N800.......working!
 

Yes and No. Yes, it works directly with HD connected to N800 and a tail attached to the labtop PC for power. It works this way. No. It does not work with the USB HUB if the USB hub is powered by a laptopPC. My guess is laptopPC is NOT powerful enough to power the USB HUB but is powerful enough to power the HD directly. So, that means any kind of power-brick is out of the question for this particular palmsize drive, I guess.


bun

Re: 160G palmsize HD to N800.......working!
 

See my previous post, in order for the HD to get enough juice, I need to power the USB HUB with a USB AC adapter. LaptopPC USB plug is NOT enough to make my HD work, although it is having a steady green light though. Have you tried to use an USB AC adapter with your USB HUB? I know it is frustrating, we will get it work :)


bun

Re: 160G palmsize HD to N800.......working!
 

It really seems to be about the power. I have tried using the AC adapter that came with it i.e. 5V@2A so the should be plenty of power. I also used an external battery pack/cell phone charger that I use to recharge the N800. Nothing seems to work. I'm sure glad you have patience :D though I'm almost ready to give up. The one thing I haven't tried (I'll do it tonight) is to try every thing with an external 3.5" USB drive. I think everyone says that works (directly and through the hub)

C

Re: 160G palmsize HD to N800.......working!
 

Definitely considering trying THIS out. I can't see dimensions of the unit anywhere...but it's a 4-port Battery Powered USB Hub. That's awesome. If anyone checks this out, be sure to post your reviews for us!! :D

http://www.shopping.com/xPO-Cybernet...-Hub-CP-H420MP

Re: 160G palmsize HD to N800.......working!
 

Check out dmesg, like I suggested on the other thread. It may reveal something important.

Re: 160G palmsize HD to N800.......working!
 

Thanks. The pics are really nice, a pic paints a 1000 words. I am interested to see whether you can get any ext HD runs with the AA-battery powered device. I got several of them, I can get a lot of stuff working, but no HD, yet. You never know ;)

Like this palmsize HD, I have been trying for months before I pull this off, power on the tablet with the HD attached.


bun

Re: 160G palmsize HD to N800.......working!
 

I thought I had posted this this morning but I don't see it. I it is duplicated somewhere else let me know and I will erase it.
As Jethro suggested above and the other thread, I took several passes of dmesg with and without the HD on (and not working) and my flash USB. I redirected it to 3 files that are in my root directory but I can't get them out. I'm using putty - is the a "file " command to send them to my PC. I tried sending them to my flah drive using:
cp /root/*.txt /media/usb/sda1/*.txt I can see them on the drive so they seem to get copied but I can't see them with my PC (I can't seem to unmount them - maybe the files aren't being closed??? I'll keep trying if someone thinks it's important to solve my problem and then I can post them so they can read them. The easiest would be if I can get a command to send them over putty (ssh)

TIA

C

Re: 160G palmsize HD to N800.......working!
 

that doesn't look like a proper command...

cp /root/*.txt /media/usb/sda1 I think is what you want.. you don't want *.txt at the end of the second parameter.. it would cause for unexpected results methinks... and yes.. I swear I read someone else say this same thing recently..

Aha...

http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...2Fsda1%2F*.txt

Re: 160G palmsize HD to N800.......working!
 

I got the files to go to the flash disk (twice) and I think I did it earlier, but I can't unmount the drive - no unmount command and the usb symbol has a disconnect but it only flashes. I shut the power off (I think that should unmount cleanly then) and when I look with my laptop they aren't there - I think because they didn't get closed properly. They were on the flash drive since I could look at them with putty(ssh) and the local file manager. Is there a way to transfer the 3 files with putty or the installed go to root mode so I can see the files in /root. I could do that with another file manager I had but I haven't installed it yet on Diablo.

Cheers

C

Re: 160G palmsize HD to N800.......working!
 

putty has pscp.. a different exe downloadable at their site which allows you to SCP files over..

pscp root@tablet:/root/*.txt ./

is what you would do in a dos prompt... you can't umount if the device is busy.. which means that all terminals must not even be cd'd into the /media/usb directory or it will return device is busy.

Other than that I dunno.

Re: 160G palmsize HD to N800.......working!
 

I got them from the N800 through pscp - thanks fs. Slowly getting there - 1 babystep at a time...
The dmesg names should be relatively obvious what I was doing.
1. no USB
2. 20 GG HD through the 4 port hub
3. USB flash
So if someone wants to take a look and see if there is something interesting, I would appreciate it.

TIA

C

Re: 160G palmsize HD to N800.......working!
 

dl and install emelfm2, http://gronmayer.com/it/index.php. It is a gui file manager with editor, allows file edit while points to the file. Allow edit root files with root access,

xterm
sudo gainroot
emelfm2
or put it in personal menu.

I done a lot of things many time faster by using this gui, point and edit, no commands line commands.

bun

Re: 160G palmsize HD to N800.......working!
 

Thanks Bun
That's the file manager I had before I re-flashed to Diablo. I just couldn't find it in all the excitement. I'll put it in for next time. Hopefully someone will come up with a reason why my hub doesn't work...

C

Re: 160G palmsize HD to N800.......working!
 

Lets do things one at a time.

Put off the USB hub first to minimize variables.
1) were you able to get into USB host mode? Just hook up a keyboard and test it.
2) were you able to generate the USB icon when get in/out of USB host mode
3) were you able to make the external HD work with the tablet
4) when you are sure about the config, then repeat the whole exercise with the USB hub.

My recipe, so far so good,

1) connect the USB hub to AC adapter
2) connect the ext HD to USB hub
3) connect the USB hub to a poweroff tablet.
4) turn on the tablet
5) xterm>USB OTG>USB host

If still no USB icon, I would momentarily unplug the tablet from the USB hub for a couple of seconds and reconnect and repeat
xterm>USB OTG>USB host

bun

Re: 160G palmsize HD to N800.......working!
 

This does not sound right. USB flash key should work under any conditions. I would fine tune the configuration using USB flash key before attempting with the EXT HD, which is slightly more trickier.

bun

Re: 160G palmsize HD to N800.......working!
 

about the incorrect 'cp *.txt somewhere/*.txt': It could indeed cause trouble. The '*' is expanded by the shell _when you enter the command_, this is different from how it works in the DOS command line.

Say you have the file 'file.txt' in the source directory, and then you have 'somewhere/important.txt'. '*.txt' would expand to 'file.txt' and 'somewhere/*.txt' would expand to 'somewhere/important.txt' and the copy command would be
cp file.txt somewhere/important.txt
which is not what you want.
cp *.txt somewhere/
or
cp *.txt somewhere/.
is what you want.
(the final '.' means 'current directory', i.e. the same as just the directory name. It's customary to use /. just to avoid accidentally specifying a file or something - with the / at the end it will have to exist in advance and be a directory, otherwise the cp command could just create a file of that name if you had misspelled it.)

Re: 160G palmsize HD to N800.......working!
 

OK - getting a little more interesting...
I don't have a USB keyboard but will try and get one later today so I couldn't try your ideas at this time.
But I went back to the flash key and did some tests. If I plug it in directly to N800 every thing's fine. Remove it and plug it into the hub and then plug the hub into the NIT then everything is fine. Start all over and plug in the hub and then plug in the flash key in to the hub, it doesn't work. with USB Control program changing between periphrial/OTG/Host makes no difference. Then removing the hub and plugging it in again - nothing. Plugging the flash directly in - nothing. It seems to get into a state where where I can only get it back to working is by turning it off then on. I'm sure there is an easier way but that works :) Looking at "top" there doesn't seem to be any funny USB named programs running...
I must be doing something wrong with USB control or this may be a bug? but the only way to reset it is to power it off and then back on.
Is this normal or are we getting closer to something.
TIA
C

Re: 160G palmsize HD to N800.......working!
 

A stab in the dark - try 'lsmod' at different points, to see if the N800 loads a driver that, when remaining, prevents re-init of the USB handling (as it would do that only when it was loaded).

Re: 160G palmsize HD to N800.......working!
 

I tried lsmod before/after/during and there are no drivers that mention USB at all and no changes in the list.
One thing that was a little different: When I plugged my key into to hub its led flashed but didn't connect - last time it did nothing and then hung the ability to make any USB device to work. But removing the hub and plugging it in directly into the NIT everything worked and I didn't have to reboot.
It seems there is something that is intermittent - in the timing or voltage perhaps.
Is there a module that gets loaded with the USB? I can't even see the USB control program when I run top - unless it is named something different and not obvious. maybe "osso-media-server"???

Re: 160G palmsize HD to N800.......working!
 

Yes, that is NOT totally abnormal, maybe it is, I did it occasionally to get things going. And to turn on the USB host mode, when it works, it can be turned on/off very easily, when it does not work, I will unplug/plug to 'wake' up the USB host mode. As you said, there maybe an easier way, for the layman, looks like unplug/plug USB device is good enough to wake up the USB host mode. And I also do USB OTG/host when the tablet is confused. And going to reboot menu does not wake up the USB mode, one has to power it OFF then on.


bun

Re: 160G palmsize HD to N800.......working!
 

How do you remove your USB device, be it the USB hub or the HD?

You suppose to click the USB icon and hit "disconnect USB whatever...." I noticed that if you did not do that, the tablet gets confused easily and will refuse to wake up. I also notice similar situation in the desktop PC. This is MORE true for HD then other USB device. If you do not turn the device off and remove the device, that particular USB port "remembers" it and refuse to load/refresh a new device. I have to plug into a different USB port and it will then load, or reboot.


bun