Well yes you have helped at least one other person, MEEEEEEE!
I was having a nightmare trying to load Rockbox onto my e280. I could get Rockbox to run, but only by copying the .mi4 file to the system drive while in recovery mode. Obviously this then meant I could not dual boot back to the original Sansa Firmware. I tried using both the "Rockbox Utility" but it refused to find my Sansa, which is running firmware version 1.02.24e. I also tried to use sansapatcher.exe but it could not find the files it required. So many thanks for your manual installation instruction, they worked first time with a little substitution for the obvious differences in the models.
Just want to say that Rockbox is awesome, but also how it reveals just what an amazing piece of kit my e280 actually is.
Such a shame that the 'official' firmware is so unbelievably poor. :'(
Here is my version of how to upgrade an e280:
How to manually install Rockbox firmware onto an e280 running sansa firmware version 1.02.24e
Download pp5022.mi4 from Rockbox site.
Boot & connect e280 to PC using the included USB cable, check to see that drive letter
appears in File Manager.
Download e280-1.02.24e.zip. Unzip & make a copy of file pp5022.mi4 renamed to OF.mi4
Copy the Rockbox version of pp5022.mi4 to root of e280 & OF.mi4 to SYSTEM folder on e280.
Download latest rockbox build & extract to e280. It should appear as .rockbox in the root
directory of the e280
Double check that .rockbox folder/directory & pp5022.mi4 file are in the root directory
and that OF.mi4 is in the SYSTEM folder/directory.
Disconnect e280 - it will then reboot.
The Sansa e280 will then refresh database and confirm that the firmware upgrade has taken
place.
It will then reboot itself once more, but this time the Rockbox splash screen will appear.
Yippee!!
If you wish to boot to the origonal sansa firmware simply hold down the left arrow/rewind
button, when switching on the e280. The e280 will then boot to the original sansa firmware
I hope this helps.
AngelfireEdit: Remove colours and formatting - BigBambi