Sansa: Bricked after Sandisk format

[Fred]

Ok, here goes.

About two weeks ago I decided to bite the bullet and install Rockbox. The installation went alright and I must say Rockbox looks quite good.

The first thing which went wrong was rather strange. When I went to look at the mp3 files on my computer I found that the files had been put in a folder (system?) and renamed with a standard file prefix and 00# numerical suffix. This may have happened through me plodding around in the settings folder at the start.

My solution to this was to delete the files (through windows explorer). When I rebooted into the original firmware I found the files still came up on the player but there was an error when I selected them. My big mistake was to then format the player from within the settings menu.

My firmware version is 1.03.01beta

My player now boots with the sandisk icon (grizzly dog thingie) then goes to the Rockbox boot loader which says 'No partition found' and shuts down

I can access recovery mode, this makes no difference as the rockbox bootloader seems to ignore this.

I've tried using manufacturing mode and e200tool to copy the BL_SD_boardSupportSD.rom file without any apparent change. I did this using Knoppix 3.7. The program connected to the player and the transfer seemed to be successful. I was not able to get the I2C.bin transfer to work

The rockbox version as listed by the bootloader is r12896-070323 and I was using v0.2 of the bootloader.

I am not a programmer so I don't realy understand what sansa patcher does. My best guess would be that there is a pointer somewhere whose value I would need to change using the e200tool in order to boot into the sandisk firmware.

I would dearly love to get my Sansa back! I also want to run Rockbox again.

I think I need some help from people who know a bit about the code.

Cheers.

[Vortex]

Allright, I didn't quite get what the exact problem is.

So you formated the player using the Original Firmware? Actually my OF doesn't offer me that option but that might be because I'm using an old version of the OF (my player doesn't display the 'grizzly dog thingie' upon boot but the classic Sandisk logo).

And now you cannot boot either Rockbox or the Original Firmware, right? Did you try booting the Original Firmware by holding "|<<" (left) during startup?

You could try the a trick mentioned here http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php?topic=10766.0 and create an empty file called 'sansa.fmt' on the recovery partition and then reboot the player. This should hopefully reformat the player properly and create all the neccessary partitions.

[Fred]

Both the Format option and the 'grizzly dog' animation are new in the beta firmware. The grizzly dog thing is similar to a picture which appeared on the box which came with my player.

My fundamental problem is, when rockbox is working normally the Rockbox bootloader starts first and then hands control over to the OF if the |<< button is pressed. When I had Rockbox working its bootloader always came up first, then the OF.

Now the Bootloader is exiting with an error and shuts down without handing over control. It also makes no difference what I put in the 16 MB Fat partition since the OF never has a chance to look at it. I've tried the 'sansa.fmt' trick and I've tried putting the relevant firmware file in there, nothing happens.

[Llorean]

The thing is, when you turn on the player, the order of operations is:

Sansa Flash Loader -> (Loads whatever's in the hidden partition) -> Rockbox bootloader -> (loads whatever you held down the button for) -> Whatever firmware you had it load.

The flash loader handles use of the recovery partition, etc. Rockbox's code can't prevent it from running, because it runs first. Though I have heard that the beta firmware replaces the flash loader with one that won't let you downgrade (or re-write) the hidden partition's contents.

This may be your problem, that the beta flash loader is unreliable or restricted.

Does sansapatcher recognize your device?

[Fred]

Thanks for the pointer Llorean.

Turns out to have been a sansa firmware issue.

This page saved my life

http://www.anythingbutipod.com/forum/showthread.php?t=15436

Lets see how soon I can wreck it again : )