I896

My condition seems fairly unique:

• Samsung Captivate (Model i896)
• Rogers Wireless (Canada)
• OSX (mac air, too small to install bootcamp)

Reference URLs (nothing verified working!)

• Secret codes
• XDA Forums
• XDA Wiki
• One Click Unlock

Steps that worked for me

• Reference URL for Installing Clockwork Recovery Mod on OSX
• Download kernel image

$ tar xvf captivate-recovery-cwm5-kernel.tar

• Start cellphone in download mode by holding volume down, power on, and plugging in the USB. Note: You have to have USB debugging turned on in system settings!

$ heimdall flash --kernel zImage

rooting the phone with Skyrocket

• Download the rootkit here
• Be sure to add the "$adb wait-for-device" line as documented, to avoid the "Error: device not found" error.

Stock Rogers Wireless image

I needed to go back to the stock Rogers Wireless image on osx. I downloaded the stock image, and ran heimdall in download mode:

$ heimdall flash --primary-boot boot.bin --cache cache.rfs  --factoryfs factoryfs.rfs  --secondary-boot Sbl.bin --kernel zImage --verbose

Outstanding issues

I can't seem to find a way to root this phone using OSX:

• If the One Click Root guy is reading this, please add "I896" to the models you search for, this model is missing.
• If the heimdall guy is reading this, on OSX I get "Tar header contained and invalid file size" for every package I try to open.