Llorean, I do understand your point and your desire to identify causes of problems or bugs.
But, you should understand that I was scared that $185 would be gone unless I made the exchange for another right away -- just four hours after purchase. I did not want to donate my Sansa to science!
When I had that unchanging Sandisk logo, this was the first thing I found:
Ever since around June 30th, Rockbox freezes at the logo on startup. Why?
It is believed that this is caused by the MicroSD patch, which is now in SVN as of June 30. There seems to be some sort of physical glitch in some Sansas that causes them to freeze if a MicroSD card has never been inserted. Unfortunately, the only currently known way to fix this is to find a MicroSD card, and with Rockbox frozen at the logo, insert the card.
But, I subsequently found quite a number of reports of logo boot-up freezes in unmodified Sansas... That the returns agent (of an immense volume Manhattan store) took it back so readily suggests he'd seen Sansas frozen like that before.
I'm still very keen to use Rockbox on the e280 for my Oggs and M4As. I hadn't imagined there could be any way to fix things when the Sansa was unresponsive to any buttons and was not recognized when USB plugged in by either Win XP, or, after the mishap, Ubuntu.
I had hoped someone might recommend a build in the same way that participants in Mozillazine forums will recommend Firefox or Seamonkey builds. I am also wondering whether the Rockbox install is better done from Linux, since that ./rockbox directory looks like *nix. And, since I now have a 2Gb microSD, would hving that inserted when I first attempt booting Rockbox prevent a repeat mishap?