REPAIRED! Gigabeat F/40 working again!

[radi0j0hn]

Whew!  My Gigabeat was looping at startup and would not be recognized as a drive on my PC.  I thought I had "bricked" it!  But looking at the "Gigabeat Surgery" page gave me confidence to open it.

The trick is to (gently) remove the drive's ribbon cable and start the unit.  It gives an error on the screen, of course.  The LEAVING THE UNIT ONE, reinsert the ribbon.  You should then be able to access the drive and repair the software.  In my case, it needed a manual install of the RockBox bootloader file. 

All the help is here, just read carefully and look at the MANUAL for your device!

[Chronon]

Hi.

If you want to give advice to people who are going to follow the Gigabeat Surgery instructions then you should edit that page to keep the information all in one place.  This message will eventually just drift off and get lost.  Also, the forums are specifically for discussion rather than tutorials or one-way communication.

If you feel this information is useful for people then please get a wiki account and put the information where it belongs.   

[radi0j0hn]

It took me a while to find the "trick" to get the looping to stop...and there are many, many posts on the net complaining about the same exact problem with the Gigabeat.  Since this is a hardware forum, and a place where people with the same hardware problem might look, I assumed that giving them some basic information without getting too redundant would be useful.  I sure could have used it earlier myself.

If you are offended by my attempt to help those who are less than experts, please alert the moderator of my terrible error!  And please note the sprig of mistletoe attached to the rear of my pants.

[Llorean]

Well, he's right, our guidelines pretty clearly state that the forum is for asking questions / discussion.

If you think the instructions don't mention something important, improve the instructions. That's why it's a wiki. And that's also better for helping people, because the one thing they're going to have to read is the instructions. They have no way of knowing, in advance, to search for your tiny little post that's going to fade away and see it's extra tips.

Simply put - don't mock people for pointing out the guidelines for you. It's your own responsibility to know them, you agreed to in exchange for having posting access to these forums, and if you really don't care about them that exchange can be nulled.

Thanks, and have a nice day.

[radi0j0hn]

I appreciate your point of view, but I must add that I found my way to the answer by reading "tiny liitle posts" that finally pointed me in the right direction!  There were also a TON of false leads and bad advice from people who did not have personal experience with the hardware and the problem.

So I thought that to confirm the solution one more time might be of use.  I teach a lot of beginners with digital cameras, so I know how lost and confused people can be, especially when they think they have ruined their gadget.

Since I apparently do not understand the mindset of this particular thread, I'll find a more appropriate place to post. 

[Llorean]

Well, you said looking at the "Gigabeat Surgery" page gave you confidence to open it - this sounds like you started in the wiki, so why can't you improve it?

As you yourself noted - you ran into a lot of false leads that apparently wouldn't have been a problem if the actual guide had been effective. So please, improve it.