Boy have I done something bad to my Sansa280.

[gr00ve]

I was uhh...trying to use it as an install USB device for my old imac (seemed like a great idea at the time!). I had reformatted it as OS X (journaled) and copied over a dmg...only it didn't work (of course) and now the player won't even start up (big surprise--I erased everything!!).

I tried the recovery mode thing (I think) but all that happens is the player's blue ring lights up, and the screen stays black. My guess is the mac reformatted *everything* on the player so I don't know if I even have the 16Mb partition intact...let alone system/firmware files.

I've read through many different forum posts here but none of them seem to describe the same problem. I'm reasonably tech-savvy, but I have to admit that I don't know even where to start on this.

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

[Febs]

Take a look at this page:  http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/SansaE200Unbrick

[gr00ve]

Yes, I had tried this already but the device does nothing but light the blue ring.

The "Manufacturing mode" section looks like what I might have to do to get this thing operating again, but the e200tool looks a little scary and the page warnings aren't making me feel any better. Can I destroy my mac using this thing??

(...and the mi4 code page is totally beyond me.)

From all the posts I've read it seem that unless you get the sansa to show up as a USB device (doing the hold-record-menu thing) then it's going to need the e200tool. Is that about right?

Eek.

[saratoga]

Can I destroy my mac using this thing??

I don't see how you could damage your PC using it.

(...and the mi4 code page is totally beyond me.)

From all the posts I've read it seem that unless you get the sansa to show up as a USB device (doing the hold-record-menu thing) then it's going to need the e200tool. Is that about right?

From what I understand, recovery mode is on the hidden partition, so if you erased that, you probably have to use manufacturing mode.

[Bagder]

Yes, recovery mode is provided by the bootloader which is present in the hidden partition.

[TooMuchTime]

...I had reformatted it as OS X (journaled)...

Exactly what does this mean?  That you formatted the e280 with the OSX file system?

[zajacattack]

In that case, you need to get to recovery mode using e200tool and restore the original firmware AND format it back to FAT32 by placing sansa.fmt on the recovery disk.

[AlexP]

You do not need e200tool to get to recovery mode.  However, if you have managed to remove recovery mode, then you will need manufacturing mode + e200tool.

Check here:  http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/SansaE200Unbrick