e280: Installation failed. Recovery mode fails. What now?

[Mr_Rabid_Teddybear]

Hello. I got my e280 today. Planned to be my H340s rockboxed little brother. Luckily it's not a v2, backside says "model: e280". I use the Sansa Firmware Updater on windows and upgrade firmware. Firmware is now 01.02.18F. That's "European (with FM)". I booted into the default firmware and looked around. Nowhere did anything say "Rhapsody". So as far as I can tell my model is a version 1 straight european e280 with FM radio (Norway are not in EU).

Now I get back into Linux where I usually stay. I put the directory .rockbox too the root of the player. Download sansapatcher and make it executable. run "sudo ./sansapatcher". I follow the steps and get "installation successful". Disconnect the device.

When then booting the loading of either firmware fails. I try with and without left button and it variously complains that files like OF.bin or rockbox.mi4 or rockbox.e200 are not found. I decide I will probably have to follow the instructions on wiki "SansaE200Unbrick".

I boot into recovery mode. I tranfer (only) the file SKU_E-PP5022.mi4 onto the 16MB partiton. I try to rename it pp5022.mi4 later also. I detatch. The screen says it upgrades and restarts. When restarted all I get are a message "load main image fail". I can still access the recovery mode but I can't get further than this.

I guess the .mi4 file I downloaded from where the wiki pointed
http://daniel.haxx.se/sansa/mi4.html
might be the wrong for my player. Where can I get a .mi4 that corresponds with firmware 01.02.18F? Are there other ideas so I don't have to give my new player up as bricked?

[Mr_Rabid_Teddybear]

Well. After getting a lot of help on IRC and all and constantly failing, I tried another approach. I dragged out an old laptop running Debian Etch, a 330 MHz with only USB 1.1 and transfered the files over there. And now, dang!, recovery mode worked. And then sansapatcher worked and I am now the lucky owner of a new rocboxed e280!  

So it all, embarrassing enough, boils down to probably failing USB 2.0 controllers on my main PCs MoBo. So I must get a new MoBo, obviously....

Well, thanks to those who helped on IRC, and sorry for raising a stink. Alarm over!