Third Party > Repairing and Upgrading Rockbox Capable Players

Clip+ bricked. Unbrick failed?

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ZGruk:
I installed Rockbox on my Sansa Clip+ and was fairly happy with it until one day when I unplugged it from charging (on OF), it froze up. I hard reset it (power button for  10 sec) and it came back to life, but didn't play anymore and froze quickly. Each time I was able to hard reset it to get it back (for awhile) but I had to hold the power button longer every time. I formatted it with the OF but that didn't fix anything and at about that point it refused to come to life altogether.

I concluded that it was bricked and after about 2 weeks of leaving it sitting, attempted to unbrick it with the SansaAMSUnbrick instructions here: http://www.rockbox.org/wiki/SansaAMSUnbrick. When I connected it to the computer (running Linux) it reported a size of 4MB instead of ~1000 like the instructions said it should. I figured this was probably enough and ran the command to copy the OF .bin file. It came back saying that the device was full and only 4MB could be copied. I checked and found the the bin file was 15MB. Needless to say, when I unplugged it, it did not come to life. It is possible that the battery is dead since I left it for 2 weeks and at one point I left it frozen overnight, but it was full when the problem started. Is there hope for this device or should I go shopping for a new one?

Thanks, ZGruk

funman:
It should not be possible to brick the Clip+ by simply using it, the unbrick procedure should only be necessary when flashing a new OF fails, or if a bad bootloader was flashed.

Did it refuse to come back to life after plugging it on USB to charge it? (after making sure it's powered off or discharged; 2 weeks should be plenty enough)

If the reported drive is 4MB then you should attempt the unbrick procedure again until you see the correct size, it's very difficult to have the correct drive come at the first attempt, for me it always required between 3 and 10 attempts until it worked.

SansaAMSUnbrick says
--- Quote ---If it doesn't works, try to repeat it several times.
--- End quote ---
but perhaps it's not explicit enough.

If you have a soldering iron available you should try to unsolder the battery (only the + or ground wire should be enough) so you are sure that the device is off before plugging it on USB, and you are sure that it isn't causing problems.

If the battery is disconnected the device will run off USB power and you are still able to perform an upgrade.

Note: you should be using the same OF file that you had on the device previously to perform the upgrade (ideally patched with the same rockbox bootloader that you had)

Finally if you give up and decide to get a new one, don't throw it away; the parts can still be useful (and if you don't want to keep the parts then i'm sure a rockboxer could have a use for it)

ZGruk:

--- Quote ---Did it refuse to come back to life after plugging it on USB to charge it?
--- End quote ---
Well, it didn't come on when plugged in again. I haven't tried it unplugged after letting it charge

As a matter of fact, the battery was disconnected when I tried unbricking it. However, it was sufficiently painful to solder it back, that I don't want to try it again.

The OF file was the same one I had before, though without the Rockbox bootloader patch.

here is the result of  sudo fdisk -l (the part pertaining to the player)

--- Code: ---Disk /dev/sdg: 4 MB, 4231680 bytes
1 heads, 9 sectors/track, 918 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 9 * 512 = 4608 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xffffc0cf

--- End code ---

I tried it again and this is all I can get.

edit 2010/07/08 added fdisk output

edit: I changed the date to a non-ambiguous format - AlexP

sockbox:
I'm having the same issue w/ my 8GB clip+. The screen is blank and when plugged into usb via xp reports a 4MB RAW partition.

This occured after plugging in the player into the USB port. The player froze and I had to reset it by pressing the power button for 15 sec. After that it never recovered.

Does anyone have a fix? The unbrick method doesn't work in this situation.

http://www.anythingbutipod.com/forum/showthread.php?t=54634

saratoga:

--- Quote from: sockbox on April 20, 2011, 10:43:52 PM ---Does anyone have a fix?

--- End quote ---

Did you try the unbrick process?

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