Now that I'm using my Nexus S the HTC Magic I was using before feels really slow. I decided that instead of just doing a factory reset and giving it away I'd try putting CyanogenMod on it. I don't know a lot about it but I'd heard CyanogenMod is good at scaling down for slower devices. It wasn't simple, and I'd already unlocked my device previously. What follows are just a few notes in case I have to do it again. This is what worked for me to get CyanogenMod 6.1 on this phone, there's an HTC Ion here that I might need to do the same for some day.

Most of the process is described step-by-step on the CyanogenMod wiki page for the Magic.

I was concerned about backing up my Google apps (since I'd heard about the separate licensing), I tried Astro and another backup tool but couldn't see them. As it turns out, the Google apps didn't have to be backed up, there's a package to flash them later on.

I booted the phone to see which model it was by holding back & power together. This showed it was an HTC Magic 32B, RADIO-2.22.27.08, etc. After that I turned off syncing and did a factory reset, since I was giving away the phone and didn't know what would come next (though I think that was unnecessary). Part of the process to root the phone uses an exploit on an older version of Android, so basically what happens is you put the exploitable version on, then boot and install FlashRec and take advantage of the exploit to install the modded firmware. This installs an older version of CyanogenMod and then you're able to upgrade to the latest. At least I think that's what happened.

Installing FlashRec from the SD Card needs an app that can do that installation, like Quick App Install. Unfortunately this introduced one extra annoyance for me. My phone came from T-Mobile and I use a T-Mobile SIM in it. I was modding it in Windsor (Canada) so I had no data plan and the old version of Android needs cell data to get through the start up process (just for signing in to Google). Luckily someone in the house had a Rogers SIM I could borrow to get the job done (of course I still had to manually enter the APN info).

One other confusing bit was about the recovery image. I wasn't able to replace recovery.img with Amon Ra. If I'd used adb I probably could have figured that out. The new user on the phone probably won't be swapping firmware a lot so I think the unmaintained CyanogenMod recovery image will be okay. The recovery image is the software that puts up the screen shown when the phone is booted into fastboot (holding down back & power on my phone). The recovery image is what I used to install other firmware from the SD card (like the Google apps and new kernel).

After modding the phone it booted up fine and looked okay but had a slight green shade to everything. This is apparently a known issue and a current workaround is to update the kernel, there's a build for the Magic 32B linked to from this post.

So that's my addendum to what's already out there; don't take it as a guide or advice. I did all this using only stuff I found on the web - while I do work for Google, I don't work on Android.