A few days ago I downloaded and installed rockbox for the first time on my Sansa e200. All was working quite well and I was enjoying exploring the new features available in rockbox. I noticed my battery was running low so I plugged in the usb cable and got the connector picture showing on the screen and assumed the player was charging. I hadn't yet read that there was no usb support in the rockbox software and didn't know that leaving the usb connected while in rockbox mode was a really bad idea. With the plug connected the player was unresponsive to further control inputs so I set it down and started browsing the rockbox.org site. After a couple hours of browsing I figured the player ought to be fairly well recharged and picked it up. The screen had gone black and the player was very hot which caused me to drop the player from a height of about 2.5 feet to the floor - with the usb cable still plugged in.
I picked it back up and unplugged the usb. The player seemed dead, no response to any buttons - even a very long press of the power button did nothing. Because it was so hot I feared the battery might have vented. I opened the case and was relieved to see the battery intact and undeformed. I removed the battery, inspected it, it looked good and it wasn't as hot as the players case. I let everything cool down for about 30 minutes and reinstalled the battery. The player booted up into rockbox and everything seemed to be working fine.
I booted into the original firmware and reset the usb mode to msc to allow me to update the rockbox installation. Upon connecting the usb cable my PC says "unrecognized usb device" and the drives don't appear although the player's screen says "connected" with animating arrows and an animating charging icon. I rebooted the PC and tried again with the same result. I tried the player with a second PC and got the same result. Not knowing if the Sansa's usb port was damaged by the drop/impact with the cable attached, I downloaded a usb sniffer/logger on my PC and could see that the Sansa was spitting out about a dozen small packets to the PC on connection although I don't know anything about the usb protocol so I have no idea if the data represents a proper handshake or not.
I don't yet have an opinion on whether it was the overheating while plugged in or the impact from the fall or perhaps something else that has caused me to lose usb connectivity. However, while booted in the OF upon connecting the usb the player does seem to be charging properly and it isn't getting hot.
So my first question is does anyone having advice for troubleshooting my usb connectivity?
My second question is if I cannot regain usb functionality can I update my player's rockbox installation via the microSD card? Could I put a new copy of .rockbox on the card and then while booted into rockbox use the delete, cut and paste functions to replace the operating .rockbox folder with a new one? I'm afraid to try this because if it fails and I don't have usb connectivity I'll be unable to restore my player. Right now I can still load new music via the card and the current installation of rockbox is fairly useable. So it's not a total loss.
I wanted to try my hand at developing for this player and making new custom builds so being able to update it is a high priority. I was considering ordering another player. The 8 gig players are less than I paid for this 2 gig player about 2 years ago, and the headphone jack is getting a bit sketchy, the screen is scratched up, the scroll wheel and center button are less responsive and battery capacity is down about 30% - more than enough reason to justify a new purchase. But then I read about a new version 2 being incompatible with rockbox. Any suggestion as to how I can acquire a new version 1/compatible player? Or can anyone guesstimate the chances that the v2 will be supported soon/ever? Or perhaps the Sansa View?
Much thanks in advance for any assistance,
Todd Allen
Topic: Sansa e200 - cooked usb (Read 1738 times)
