FM transmitter not working
 

Hello everyone,
I am having troubles with the fm transmitter on my n900, it just doesnt work, not even the beep in the background, the volume is up, I have the fm booster, I have installed the fm faker but it still doesnt work, it was working just fine one week ago.
Do you think it could be a HW malfunction? Please help.

Thank you.

Re: FM transmitter not working
 

You can check that by reflashing your device. If the problem persists, there may be a hardware problem.

Re: FM transmitter not working
 

Reflashing definitely would tell you if you have a hardware problem, but first you might just want to take slightly less drastic steps. Remove the FM Faker, whatever that is, and try again.

Also, what do you get from this command:
cat /sys/class/i2c-adapter/i2c-2/2-0063/power_level

That file is what determines the power level of the transmitter, and by default it is 113. I have a script to set mine to 118. Be careful to not fo above a certain level (I think it is 121).

Finally, what do you get from:
md5sum /lib/modules/2.68.28-omap1/fmtx-si4713.ko

Re: FM transmitter not working
 

Wow, I've just tried it just out of interest and mine says 120. I am not aware of having done anything special to deserve that. This is a freshly flashed device upgraded to CSSU-Thumb. Could that be the reason?

Re: FM transmitter not working
 

I am just as surprised as you are! But I just checked on my CSSU Thumb N900, and you are correct, the power level is preset to 120. :)

That power level file hacking broke with PR1.3, but MohammadAG linked a modified kernel module for the transmitter which allowed the power level to be set again. I guess they decided to simply set the transmission level to max by default in CSSU, thanks for noticing that!

Re: FM transmitter not working
 

Yes power level is now 120 for most due to community fixes.
This makes FMBoost obsolete BTW.

Re: FM transmitter not working
 

Thanks a lot for the help, this is what I get

/home/user # cat /sys/class/i2c-adapter/i2c-2/2-0063/power_level
120


/home/user # md5sum /lib/modules/2.68.28-omap1/fmtx-si4713.ko
md5sum: can't open '/lib/modules/2.68.28-omap1/fmtx-si4713.ko': No such file or directory

Re: FM transmitter not working
 

Not surprising, there is a typo. It should be 6, not 68. However it might not be there anyway. As we have just found out above, your power level 120 suggests that you are running CSSU, which may mean you are not running the stock (omap1) kernel. Try this instead:

Those characters around uname -r are the backquotes, reversed apostrophes, grave accents or whatever they are called.

Re: FM transmitter not working
 

thank you, here it is

/home/user # md5sum /lib/modules/`uname -r`/fmtx-si4713.ko
f46800300a3fce191a8d2ef7a165567e /lib/modules/2.6.28.10-power52/fmtx-si4713.ko

Re: FM transmitter not working
 

and

/home/user # md5sum /lib/modules/2.6.28-omap1/fmtx-si4713.ko
699dc3ac83a0a5fa924afecaf243de16 /lib/modules/2.6.28-omap1/fmtx-si4713.ko

Re: FM transmitter not working
 

Same as mine. Your FMTX driver seems to be OK. Over to malfunctioning or someone else who understands the topic better than I do. But be prepared to have to reflash as Purple suggested.

Re: FM transmitter not working
 

thank you, I hope I dont need to reflash since my n900 doesnt have a USB port attached to it since it fell off, I will keep my fingers crossed

Re: FM transmitter not working
 

Like pichlo said, the driver module doesn't seem to be the problem. I write it down to the FM Faker thing you mentioned in your first post. It must be interfering with the mechanism. What does it do, and did you manage to uninstall it properly? If I remember correctly, this is to allow for the extended frequency range, right?

Also, for the future, you might want to do a system backup that you can restore when things go bad, especially since you don't have a working USB port.