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Trying to revive an original Archos Jukebox (20GB)

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mcf57:
I have an old Archos Jukebox 20 that I am trying to resurrect. It had been sitting in a closet for years because I thought the hard drive failed. Well, I recently pulled it out and gave it a try and amazingly it worked....briefly. About 4 days later, it did what it was doing in the past that made me believe it was toast. Essentially, it appears to hang up while trying to load the OS (ver 1.28).

Well, I thought the hard drive was bad so I proceeded to buy another 20GB laptop drive to replace it. I was able to take it apart and replace it with this new drive (brand new 20GB 2.5" Seagate), but it is still doing the same thing and hanging up while trying to load the OS.

Also, I took the old original laptop drive and was able to hook it up to my USB external kit and it worked fine when connected to the PC so it was obviously not the drive to begin with. I guess I should of tested it in the first place before buying another, but that isn't a huge deal & I'll just use the extra drive permanantly in my external enclosure kit anyway.

Now, someone on another board mentioned that they think this Archos loads some files from the hard drive. Do I need to install something first on the hard drive in order to get ANYTHING working in the first place? Maybe the files were corrupted on the original drive and this is why I had problems to begin with.

If files need to be pre-installed, I might just go ahead and install Rockbox on it since I have been EXTREMELY happy with Rockbox on my Sansa e250. I was told all I need to do is simply copy the Rockbox files/folders for this model directly onto the hard drive. Does this sound about right?

Any help or suggestions would be great. Thanks

LambdaCalculus:
The Archos firmware loads a file named ajbrec.ajz from the hard drive, IIRC. Perhaps the original file is corrupt.

Try extracting a Rockbox build onto the new drive and inserting it into the Archos and see what happens. If it works, then you're set.

(Also note: The Archos is HWCODEC only, so only MP3 files will work on it!)

mcf57:
OK, I'll try to extract the Rockbox files directly onto it. I'm assuming I simply just copy/paste the files to it, correct?

Let me ask this too though. I think I remember trying to hook up the Archos to the PC via the USB port and it wouldn't detect it. I'll have to try again tonight when I am at home, but could this be another indication of something else that has failed? In other words, should the USB external hard drive feature still work no matter what firmware (Archos or ROckbox) is on it and even if its corrupted?
 

LambdaCalculus:
Do you see the words "USB 2.0 Hard Disk" on the bottom front of the Archos?

mcf57:
I'll check when I get home to see if it has "USB 2.0 Hard Disk" printed on the front of the unit.

Another thing I just thought of though that might be the culprit and source of the problem. When I got the new 20GB Seagate drive, I essentially just swapped it out. I didn't even format it or put any files on it. Do you think it needs to be formatted in FAT32 before ANYTHING can be done?

Once I do that, I guess I can then also put the Rockbox files directly onto it, right?

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