Now that's a great idea! Why didn't I think about this before?

Texrat, I've got the same Motorola adapter and it works great on my n810 - whatever cables or adapters are working on the n800 will connect with the adapter into the n810. I haven't found an OTG cable yet, but I can manually switch to Host mode and read USB drives and such.

I added this alternate method of accessing Host/Otg modes to the wiki.

I got myself an A to Mini-A cable (couldn't find a mini-B). The difference is that the bottom part is slightly thicker. When I get home, I'll file down the edges the little it needs and see if I can make it fit. The pinout should be the same.

Also, I am told that host mode freezes during device enumeration on the latest OS2008 - has anyone experienced (/solved) this?

I've been following this thread from the beginning, hoping to 'get my head around' the host/otg usb modes, and thanks to your clear and simple instructions, Mara, I was finally able to achieve this goal! In the words of HJS, "Woo Hoo!"

Thanks also to the many others who contributed to this thread by way of asking the very questions I was going to ask and finally to EIPI for putting up the step-by-step instructions on the wiki.

FYI, I was able to hook up directly to a long unused thumbdrive and as a bonus for my first little test, re-discovered a collection of 'old' pics and documents I'd meant to save and forgotten where I'd left them.

Next I hooked up my Sony DSC T100 and voila, it works, seamlessly! Even better, I was able to use Maemopicasa (thanks again TahitiBob) to load pics up to my web albums directly from the camera!!

I feel as if some of the hidden potential of the IT has finally been unlocked for me and I'm grateful to members of this forum for making that possible.

Got my N800 today, updated to OS2008 and the USB OTG cable i made with help from here worked 100%! Connected botha flash drive and a keyboard, both worked

got this working with a usb hub and a couple of memory sticks. works with a usb to ps2 keyboard changer too!

ps2 mouse doesn;t seem to work though.

making the cable actually seems easier than it sounded. after cannibalizing a USB extension cable to get the female end and a mini usb cable from, stripped away the ends of the male mini usb, shorted pins 4 and 5 and connected the wires 1-1, 2-2, 3-3 and 4-4.

the only odd thing is that the devices i plugged in, i got a message say that they weren;t supported but lo and behold, they showed up. any light on what those error messages mean?

just awesome!

The only "supported" device I have found so far is another N800... when I plug that into the first N800 it shows different message (don't remember now...) and I can browse the other N800 memory cards from the first N800...

My guess is that there is very limited number of device "profiles" built into the N800 kernel. If exact profile wasn't found it will say "Unsupported device".

EDIT: I just connected my 2 N800's together with USB cable and the Host N800 doesn't say anything. It just opens up the file manager to browse files.

so this is a totally harmless message? great!

this increases the usefulness of my N800. Now I don;t have to get an expensive SDHC card and have limitless storage!

alos, i don;t have launch any scripts as it seems to connect automatically. certainly a good reason to upgrade to OS2008.

I just cleaned up the scripts and modifed the application names to more consistent... as well as added clear step by step instructions in my original post. I packed all four files into one single zip file too.

Funtionality is exactly the same as before, so you do not need to "upgrade". You can find the link into the post from the wiki page above.