Sandisk Sansa View

[obo]

Yes, the LCD for the view seems to be different, but the registers are CPU specific - i.e. they are common for the h10, yh925, hdd1630, nano etc.  The LCD registers are already different between the PP5002 and PP5020 (which I didn't realise before), so I guess it's not so unexpected that they again seem to be different (and new) on the 6100.

[Falcon4]

OK, dusting off this old topic, as well as dusting off my long-bricked View

I think I can contribute something to this project somehow... I have a bricked View that I've managed to modify e200tool to work with... or at least identify. I've dug through the code of e200tool and made a small handful of changes to show more debug info on screen, and it's now working pretty flawlessly in cygwin within a VMware virtual XP machine (Win7 x64 host). Not a doubt in my mind I could unbrick an e200 pretty easily right now

However, I'm getting hung up on one thing that the folks here seem to have already examined: the manufacturing-mode system. Someone had to have known how that environment works, in order to write e200tool to begin with... and that system seems to work darn near the same on the View. I can upload and execute the USB stub loader on the View, but it seems to just crash the View instead of bringing up the special USB-stub mode device. The device disappears (so I know it's running the code, not just gagging on the data sent to it), but nothing ever comes back, and nothing changes on the physical player itself.

I'm just curious if there's any information known on how the GoForce 6100 platform differs from the e200 platform in regards to the loader code in "arm_code.c"... and I can later worry about how to recompile it, as cygwin isn't being so helpful in allowing me to compile the unmodified source, even with GNU ARM installed and working. Any pointers?

Of course, if I can get this thing working - and with all the data I've got on hand (I'm just one "e200tool recover bootLoader.bin" away, then I have a full backup of the entire Flash memory space pre-bricking ready to load!)... I think it isn't too far off either. If I can get it working, I'll post a fully detailed description of how to set up and run the environment on a Windows PC (Linux should be able to follow easily enough ).

[Falcon4]

Okay, well, I got the initial issue resolved thanks to the e200 code, and I created "viewtool" and posted it plus a "one-click unbrick" script here:
http://www.anythingbutipod.com/forum/showthread.php?t=62486

As to contributing what I know to help further Rockbox development...

- Compiling using ARM1176JZ-S mode doesn't work, at all. It only works when compiled with the same mode as e200tool, which is ARM7TDMI. Dunno if it's just my dev environment being messed up (cygwin seemed to be goofing up quite a bit in building, but it finally finished about 4 hours later in my i5)...
- i2c doesn't work... at all. It acts like it reads but I think it's just getting dummy info. Read -> write -> read -> original value is still there... and the whole dump is blank. I think I did some debugging on this and found it was silently tripping on some error.
- GPIO pins are pretty different... I have no idea how to use GPIO so it may be that i2c doesn't work because it's linked to GPIO pins that aren't the same between e200 and View.
- USB does work 100% as implemented in e200tool. That's the only reason I was able to make this much progress
- Access to the internal SD (NAND) is also different, but that might also be because i2c and GPIO are different. I wasn't able to get it working, it was silently failing on a command-response time-out.

I'm pretty confident that if we can collaborate with the people that reverse-engineered the e200, we can get the View running Rockbox as well. The platforms seem amazingly similar, just like a e200 with a bigger screen. Now that we can unbrick a dead View, it's pretty safe to run dev code on it and see where it takes us! I'm actually kinda curious why people abandoned the View project anyway, considering it's so similar to the e200, I've gotta wonder... what went wrong? :/

[Chronon]

As always it would be a good idea to keep your findings organized on the wiki page, which is here:
http://www.rockbox.org/wiki/SansaView

[MkFly]

I'm pretty confident that if we can collaborate with the people that reverse-engineered the e200, we can get the View running Rockbox as well. The platforms seem amazingly similar, just like a e200 with a bigger screen. Now that we can unbrick a dead View, it's pretty safe to run dev code on it and see where it takes us! I'm actually kinda curious why people abandoned the View project anyway, considering it's so similar to the e200, I've gotta wonder... what went wrong? :/

Awesome, I think I'm going to pick up an 8GB View and start seeing what we can do.  Please keep us posted on any progress.

I don't really like the look of the e200 or the Fuze anyway.

EDIT: Would it be possible/useful for me to donate a Sansa View to someone?

[Falcon4]

As always it would be a good idea to keep your findings organized on the wiki page, which is here:
http://www.rockbox.org/wiki/SansaView

I would, but... well, for one, I'm kind of a piss-poor Wiki author - good at describing my own (first-person) findings, not so great at writing a third-person article. Any suggestions there?

Also, even if I could write a good article/section, I still don't have access to edit (MattFalcon is what I registered as). So that kinda... yeah.

[saratoga]

Also, even if I could write a good article/section, I still don't have access to edit (MattFalcon is what I registered as). So that kinda... yeah.

Well you don't appear to have requested write permission, so no surprise there.  I've just given it to you now. 

[LambdaCalculus]

EDIT: Would it be possible/useful for me to donate a Sansa View to someone?

Sure, if you're willing to donate hardware to someone who's working on a port, it's much appreciated.

[Audioarchivist]

I have a Sansa View I got free from a Craigslist giveaway - the screen is broken. Good for parts and tinkering. If anyone's willing to pay some shipping (I am very poor or I'd pay it) from Canada, you can have it...

audioarchivist@hotmail.com

[betoqp]

Have there been any advances? I'd like to know, so I can dust off my old View...

[gevaerts]

Have there been any advances? I'd like to know, so I can dust off my old View...

There probably won't be, unless you dust off your old View...

[IronWorm]

Hello all.

Since I have not seen a specific forum for presentations, and at risk of being called a "necromantic" for reviving this quite old thread, I will do it here. Greetings to all. 

And now, for Something Completely Different, a man with a Sansa View bricked inside his pocket. I am needed of certain tool somebody called "Falcon4" posted, the Sansa View 'viewtool' and/or OneClickUnBrick. He posted a link to a page in that 'abi' (Anything But Ipod) forum with the tools, but that link does not exist anymore. Is there a way to get it back?

And of course I am following Rockbox in a pure way because I own a Agptek Rocker... I am really looking for its Rockbox port. The Sansa thing has come on the way just recently. If there is a port for that Sansa View, needless to say how interesting it would be, because of the View's buggy FW (and also, to make it work I should bring it back to life, thus this post). And again, sorry for bumping back this old thread.

Thank you all.

[IronWorm]

Hello all.

Since I have not seen a specific forum for presentations, and at risk of being called a "necromantic" for reviving this quite old thread, I will do it here. Greetings to all. 

And now, for Something Completely Different, a man with a Sansa View bricked inside his pocket. I am needed of certain tool somebody called "Falcon4" posted, the Sansa View 'viewtool' and/or OneClickUnBrick. He posted a link to a page in that 'abi' (Anything But Ipod) forum with the tools, but that link does not exist anymore. Is there a way to get it back?

And of course I am following Rockbox in a pure way because I own a Agptek Rocker... I am really looking for its Rockbox port. The Sansa thing has come on the way just recently. If there is a port for that Sansa View, needless to say how interesting it would be, because of the View's buggy FW (and also, to make it work I should bring it back to life, thus this post). And again, sorry for bumping back this old thread.

Thank you all.

Ok. Question answered. Sansa View alive again Now, time for watching Rockbox development both here and for the AGPTek Rocker...