Root Noob Needs Help Please

[twodmax]

Ok so i finally got a droid.. the original about a month ago, it had the frg22d build . I love it, i had started researching droids before dx came into view.
So here it is last weekend i finally took the plunge and rooted using RSD lite, i installed the motorola drivers, downloaded SPRecovery and clockwork mod. and all the frilly goodies that i was told i needed. ROM Manager, Titanium Backup.....etc. Ok It took me a few tries (only cuz soomeone left out a step in the instructions) I found them in another forum while fretting and sweating....Ok so i get the last piece of the puzzel and voila' I am now rooted. ok so i played around this last week and finally found some roms i liked. So i went to youtube and searched for how to install roms. lots of info there seemed pretty easy. So I downloaded UD8, Succulent Desire v7.0 AB and Shine.
OK next I extracted them from zips to the correct folder "nandroid" on sd card, i had to add this folder. i made sure i did a back up with rom manager first, then i backed up with titanium my apps and settings and such. ok then i rebooted into recovery mode " 'X' and power button. things were looking good but theres the finicky thing i tried advanced, i tried nandroid, i tried everything i could but it only showed me the backups from SPRecovery, i could not find the others i had downloaded.
So i guess this uberNoob could use some help here guys and gals. what have i done wrong or not done should i have wiped cache, did factory reset or what. I am lost and i am usually a compu geek. (background on me ... i was around when you only had basic, cobalt, pascal, and fortran to work with as i was in highschool at the time. and you still had to set key locations/addresses when building your computer. This was the hey day of the radioshack trs80 (trash80) and model 100 laptop with standard taperecorder to save your work on. ... so any help out there for a newly rooted noob????

 

[twodmax]

Ok so yesterday I finally got a new rom downloaded from ROM Manager... liquid froyo. I like it nice ui and all good customization, I downloaded set cpu and also swapped out my kernal to 2.6.32.9 slayher i have it clocked to 1000mhz. i feel right now this is good for a few days to see how things go. ok now heres my question where does the rom get downloaded to sd card phone mem. as its an original droid we all know theres very limited mem on phone, plus i really would like to be able to download roms from puter and place on sd card for install rather than rely on 3g (i live in a bad reception area) download and rom manager do it all for me i feel like im getting a porche but can only look at the car if i cant do more on my own. i really want to be more proactive in this process and learn more from it. any help or advice is greatly appreciated.
also any developers out there possibly interested in making a rom or theme for a college football team, or telling me how to do this.

 

[istolvampire]

There is nothing stopping you from downloading and installing roms manually using the recovery. Just download on computer and place on root of sd card. Use recovery to load, Pretty simple and most roms will have instructions on how to do it as it may very slightly between roms. This is how I always do it and it never fails me.

As for a theme someone else might be better to answer that.

 

[The_Chief]

Where does the rom get downloaded to sd card phone mem. as its an original droid we all know theres very limited mem on phone, plus i really would like to be able to download roms from puter and place on sd card for install rather than rely on 3g (i live in a bad reception area) download and rom manager do it all for me i feel like im getting a porche but can only look at the car if i cant do more on my own. i really want to be more proactive in this process and learn more from it. any help or advice is greatly appreciated.

The ROM overwrites the phone's operating system, and therefore does not take up precious RAM in the phone. You can download the ROM to the PC and move it (via USB cable) to the root of the SD Card. Depending on which recovery you're using, you may want to rename it "update.zip" and then run it in recovery. Hope this helps.

EDIT: As soon as you have recovery in place, MAKE A NANDROID BACKUP of your phone's current good state before flashing stuff. That way if something goes wrong you can always restore your phone to that point.