Sansa C250/ How do I find my music files?

[bulltrout]

I successfully installed Rockbox on my Sansa C250, I updated the database, but now I can't seem to find any of the music files.  The Music file is empty.  Not sure where to find them.  Any ideas?
thanks.

[cool_walking_]

Can you play them through the "Files" section (i.e. not using the database) ?

If you can't see them in the file browser, set the Show Files setting to "All Files".

If you can play them, maybe they aren't tagged correctly, or the database didn't initialise properly. In this case, delete the .rockbox/tagcache* (I think that's the filename pattern...) files, and try to initialise the database again.

If you can see them, but not play them, they might be in a format that Rockbox doesn't support, or have DRM.  Rockbox can't play DRM-infected files.

[AlexP]

If you placed them in the music folder, the Sansa firmware sets this (and some other) folder to hidden everytime you boot it.  To get around this, either set the show files setting to all in Rockbox, or copy your music into a different folder, such as Audio for example.  The Sansa firmware will still find it, but not hide the folder.

[bulltrout]

I've tried setting show files to all,but that hasn't helped.  Here is what I have been trying without any luck.  

Since I cannot connect the C250 to my computer when Rockbox is running, I have to boot into the Sansa firmware to connect to my pc.  Once connected in Sansa firmware, I have moved some MP3 files into the Music folder. I then created a new folder RockMusic and moved an MP3 file into that.  After rebooting into Rockbox, I still don't see any of my music or any of the folder they are in.  

More ideas? thanks.

[MarcGuay]

Are you looking under Files or Database?

Did you create the RockMusic folder inside the MUSIC folder?

[bulltrout]

I am looking everywhere.  I did look under files and database though.  Should I be able to see directories created in the Sansa firmware while in Rockbox?  Maybe the database isn't updating correctly?  I have no idea.

[MarcGuay]

When you select Files from the main menu, what do you see?

[bulltrout]

when I am in Rockbox under the files directory I see
.rockbox
System
tmp
Record
Music
Photo
Playlists
version.txt

When i open the Music directory there is nothing there.


when I connect to my pc and look at the sansa device, I see
/Internal Memory/Albums
/Internal Memory/Music
/Internal Memory/photo
/Internal Memory/Playlists
/Internal Memory/RockMusic

I have put .mp3 files into the Music and RockMusic directories

[Llorean]

It sounds like you're in MTP mode. You should be connecting in MSC mode to put your songs on.

[bulltrout]

I have wondered about this, but I don't know whether I am in MSC or MTP mode when I connect.  In MTP mode should the device be assigned a drive letter.  (I'm running Vista).
When I connect to my pc I can see the device and navigate to its files but it is not assigned a drive letter.

[Llorean]

MSC is the mode where it's assigned a drive letter. How did you install Rockbox without connecting in MSC mode?

[bulltrout]

Good point and I now have it figured out...my bad for being such an idiot.
To get my c250 to into MSC mode, I had to
1.  turn device on booting to Sansa firmware (hold down previous button while turning on).
2. enable hold, press previous button and the connect the USB cable to pc.

It is then recognized as a drive assigned with a letter.

Obviously this is what I did when I installed Rockbox, but subsequently, I kept reverting to #2 from the Rockbox sansa c200 trouble shooting section.
 No MSC Mode

If you can't find the option to switch USB mode to MSC in order to install Rockbox, you have two options:

   1. Try rolling back the Sansa firmware to an older version. Download version 1.01.00 from here (choose the letter version that matches your existing firmware). The files are compressed in .7z format; you can download 7-Zip to open them. Now enter Recovery Mode and upgrade the firmware. (Info gathered from here)
   2. With the device off, engage the hold switch, press and hold the rewind button, plug the device in your computer. If done correctly, the Sansa will be recognized as an MSC device.

I was interpreting #2 as:
1. turn device off
2. engage switch/press rewind
3. plug in
At this point it is on hold, so I would disable that then turn on. but then it would connect in MTP mode.

anyhow, now I can listen to music...thanks all for the help.

[Keith_Beef]

I'm new here, and joined the thread because I'm having a very similar problem.

On the whole, I'm very pleased with Rockbox. I've been looking for a while to rid my computer and all devices of proprietary formats (including MP3), so my main purpose in installing Rockbox is to play OGG files.

I have a 2GB Sansa c250 with firmware version 01.00.00A

I downloaded Rockbox firmware (rockbox-sansac200.zip), the font package and the x86 sansapatcher binary.

Put player in MSC mode, and connected to computer.

Extracted the Rockbox firmware and fonts directly into the player's root directory. The fonts need to go into .rockbox/fonts so need to leave options checked: Recreate folders and Overwrite existing files.

$ ls -al /media/Sansa\ c250/
total 356
drwx------  9 beef root 16384 2008-03-23 22:05 .
drwxr-xr-x  9 root     root  4096 2008-03-23 21:54 ..
drwx------ 18 beef root 32768 2007-05-16 23:19 MUSIC
drwx------  2 beef root 32768 1980-08-07 01:58 PHOTO
drwx------  2 beef root 32768 1980-08-07 01:58 PLAYLISTS
drwx------  4 beef root 32768 1980-08-07 01:58 RECORD
drwx------ 14 beef root 32768 2008-03-23 22:06 .rockbox
drwx------  5 beef root 32768 2006-10-16 04:27 SYSTEM
drwx------  2 beef root 32768 1982-01-05 04:25 tmp
-rwx------  1 beef root   512 1982-01-05 04:07 version.sdk
-rwx------  1 beef root   512 1982-01-05 04:07 VERSION.TXT
-rwx------  1 beef root   296 2007-03-12 11:44 WMPInfo.xml

Now as root, run the sansapatcher utility.

$ chmod a+x sansapatcher
$ sudo ./sansapatcher
[enter password]
sansapatcher v0.6 with v4.0 bootloaders - (C) Dave Chapman 2006-2007
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

[INFO] Scanning disk devices...
[INFO] c200 found - /dev/sdi
[INFO] Reading partition table from /dev/sdi
[INFO] Sector size is 512 bytes
[INFO] Part    Start Sector    End Sector   Size (MB)   Type
[INFO]    0            1017       3972095      1939.0   FAT16 (0x06)
[INFO]    1         3972096       4013055        20.0   OS/2 hidden C: drive (0x84)
Enter i to install the Rockbox bootloader, u to uninstall
 or c to cancel and do nothing (i/u/c) :i
[INFO] Bootloader installed successfully.
Press ENTER to exit sansapatcher :

Unmount device, disconnect it, see the normal "Refresh Database" message.
Switch off then on, and see if it works...

SanDisk logo appears for a moment, then RockBox! It worked!

What's more, the display correctly shows accented letters, such as "â", that the original firmware scrambled.

When reconnected to the computer, the Rockbox firmware displays some information for a few seconds, then the original firmware is loaded.

I copied some ogg files to the player, but they didn't seem to show up after the databade refresh. I switched the device off and on again, but they still didn't show up.

After changing a few settings, I was able to look inside the MUSIC folder, and see the OGG files I had copied, but still can't play them. The display says:


After looking at files in this way, I can't get songs to play from the database, either.

I also have a problem with the display and controls...
I can set the backlight timeout, and wake up the display after a few seconds of it darkening.

But if I let the screen darken and I don't touch a control before the next song has started, then the controls become mostly unusable.

The menu/power button switches the device off, the volume control works, but other controls don't work.

Can anybody help me out with these questions?

[zajacattack]

Do your ogg files have correct tags? Are they showing up as "" in the database?

[Bor]

After looking at files in this way, I can't get songs to play from the database, either.

Are You turn on database autoupdate ?