Oh no, What have I done...
 

OK, I did something stupid. I am a 'trying to learn' newbie.

I was trying to use flasher-2.0 and the instructions in the "How to section" regarding getting flasher to work. I enabled "rd" mode in VMWare Browser Appliance:

./flasher-2.0 --enable-rd-mode --reboot

It rebooted and threw up some stuff on the screen as it rebooted and then went to the normal Home screen.

Now everytime I switch the machine off, this stuff is still on screen (OS version etc) but Ubuntu will not recognise the 770 as a USB device anymore so I can't disable the rd mode!

Please help! Have I screwed it up ?

lol <--Those are bricks lol

make sure it's not plugged in to the recharger.
make sure vmware is in control of the usb port.

ravi-

When I get desperate, I take the battery out of the back of the 770, wait a minute, and put it back. Has solved problems for me in the past.

Hope it helps,

Brad.

Wow, Coolty, grow some tact or sensitivity.

ravi, if Ubuntu in VMWare won't work, try using a Windows box or the Ubuntu LiveCD. I think you'll need to get the device to turn off first, though, so make the AC Adapter is not plugged into the device, and use bradb's battery suggestion if necessary.

Why is that Funny?

The 770's just stuck inR&D mode.
It's working fine apart from the fact that the Nokia updater will not recognise it. Windows will not browse the device but if I load up VMware, that will allow be to browse the device if it is allowed to get to home. If I hold the home key while switching on, Ubuntu will not see it even though the USB symbol is in the top right of theboot screen.
I've taken the battery out and let it for 10 mins. No difference.

Coolty, I don't appreciate the bricks comment. Just be thankful it's not your device after all, I just followed the instructions posted in the FAQ's on this site, nothing more.

Joshua, how do I make sure that VMware has control of the USB port?

Many thanks everyone else for trying to help.

Ravi

it sounds like you figured out the usb port in vmware thing. is the 770 unplugged from the power adaptor when you turn it on with the home key presed?

Yes, the 770 is unplugged and running on batteries.
Curiously, I installed the Nokia web updater on my laptop and that recognised the 770 and updated it's firmware / bios but it STILL in rd mode!
My original machine, which used to see & update the 770 cannot see it.
Ubuntu, running on the original machine see it but only when it's fully booted to the home page.
I just cant figure it out.

Ravi

WooHoo!
Crisis over.
Somehow XP had locked the usb port when the IT was in R&D mode and Ubuntu wasn't seeing it. I installed VMware on my Vaio laptop instead and when I ran that,it immediately saw the IT and quick as a flash (crap pun intended), I ran flasher and de activated the R&D mode. It worked perfectly and quickly.
Inspired by this 'de-bricking', I applied the 2gb card patch and that works too, so now I have a fully working IT and a system recognised 2gb card!
WooHoo indeed!

All I have to do now is to get a Stowaway keyboard and get that to work without screwing up the device. (small & slightly more nervous WooHoo!)

Ravi

I don't see why you're wasting time with VMWare. Just go the LIVE CD option. Those do not install anything on your computer, and as long as you don't do something stupid (like mount your NTFS drives as read / write, and try to save to them), you'll be fine. All VMWare is doing in this case is taking up cycles.

As for the text on your screen (the 770) that's normal for RD Mode. That's "Debugging" information that you would need if you were doing Research and Development. The standard "production" mode, hides the extra information.

I dont have the CD version of Ubuntu - I just downloaded and installed as it says in the instructions! Before I did that, I'd never even seen a linux desktop, let alone played with one so I'm afraid I was (as still am) dreadfully out of my depth!
Still, it all worked out eventually but it was a harrowing few hours though!!

Live CD's are pretty easy (and it doesn't have to be Ubuntu, it can just as well be Knoppix.) You download the CD image, burn that to a CD with some CD burning software (ImgBurn from http://www.imgburn.com/ is great and free) and then boot from the CD and you're in Linux. No fuss with VMware and direct access to the USB port.

Not sure if flasher-2.0 is fixed now so it sees modern USB implementations in Linux, but if not there is a perl one-liner somewhere on the wiki that will fix that.

Flashing via Live CD has worked flawlessly for me several times, and the great thing is that it doesn't touch your HD at all - just yank the CD and reboot and you're back in your usual desktop mode.

Wow, I didn't know I could do that!
Whare does it save all your config files, download data etc if it doesn't touch the HD?

Unless you set up either some removable medium (USB stick, floppy) or a partition on your hard disk, nowhere. Either option requires some knowledge of how Linux does things.

This is exactly the reason why I prefer VMWare (Player), especially now that I am in a situation where I don't have a dedicated Linux workstation available (temporarily, obviously): It may be trickier to install and probably more finnicky about your hardware, but VMWare also leaves your Windows partition alone (unless you foolhartedly set it up not to) and it gives you a normal Linux experience with persistent storage.

<$0.02>i agree. the live cds are also slow vs vmware. i keep my mware ubuntu on analysis external hd. </$0.02>

you should try dsl linux, might change your mind about live cd's being slow.

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

I've used both livecd and vmware. If you are using the live cd, you can use a USB flash drive to store the flasher and image as they will detect and mount as a readable drive. I had to do this with a system since it didn't have a working network interface.

I have to say that my install of Ubuntu went like clockwork and then worked beautifully. I t even asked me if I wanted to upgrade to 6.something and I said 'yes' and it went away and did it. If it wasn't for Windoze locking the USB port, I would never have had a problem to start with!
As kids are asking for a PC to be connected to the TV in the living room so they can surf the net etc and I'm thinking that it may be a great opportunity to make it a linux box. Is there any media-centre type functionality available - or is that expecting too much? Will it plug in into the home network or am I going have trouble?
Thank you guys for all this advice - it's so hard to think outside the usual mac/pc box!

Ravi

While live CDs are good for flashing rootfs (a bit slow and unstable in vmware, flashing initfs or kernel is fine) they are too slow to boot IMO. In fact any booting is slow when compared to laptop standby mode :) I really hate to shutdown or hibernate my laptop just to boot linux ( http://sysresccd.org in my case) from usb stick only for reflashing my N770. Nokia should really make advanced flasher for windows or at least document that flasher.dll inside flasher wizard for windows.

There's this one:

http://www.mythtv.org/

or this one:

http://freevo.sourceforge.net/

or maybe this one (in German):

http://www.heise.de/ct/ftp/projekte/vdr/

There are probably lots more, but those you have to look up yourself. I do seem to remember GeexBox, a mini-distro that fits on a CD or DVD.

I wouldn't use a Live CD Linux as a daily workstation, but for flashing it is excellent.

Boot the Live CD, then go download the flasher and images while in Linux (they save to an internal RAM-disk), flash and when you're done, just reboot and you're done.

Wow, MythTV looks awesome. I wonder if it works in the UK with satellite TV though...

Ravi

ravi: I believe it works with DVB-S cards, although you might have difficulty with anything other than FTA (e.g. FreeSat) channels.

You can even configure Myth to get your TV listings from a <plug>absolutely fantastic</plug> TV website:

http://www.bleb.org/tv/

Cheers,

Andrew

thanks Andrew,
looking now at the plug (!!)

Ravi