Sansa e250 v2 -- no radio, no time, no voice

[rekkataichou]

Hello all,

I just came from un-bricking my Sansa e250 v2 over at AbiP and I thought I had my music/gaming/radio back now with the latest Rockbox & Bootloader -- and I almost did.

I have three two three major stumbling blocks:

• I can't use the voice-recorder -- somehow that fixed itself screwed up again. I can record in the OF (I've tested for files up to a minute long), but if I try to delete a recording, it freezes up. If I go back, I can see the recording has been deleted, but the Voice playlist says its still there. (The OF freezes up when trying to delete files in general.) In RB, a few seconds after entering Recorder, the screen freezes. (But the screen-saver still responds to key-presses.)
  .
  
• As said in the title, the radio also doesn't work. Under RB, clicking FM Radio does nothing or it causes a lock-up. (If I press power, the screen fades in and the wheel lights up, but everything is still locked.) In the OF, the radio commands are full functional, but it doesn't get any signal.

.

• The time is not kept at all. RB has the clock stuck on 6:28:15 AM Feb 7 2006 all the time. Even the App "Clock" has the hand stuck. The OF is slight better about this; it starts with 2007/9/24 12:00 and will gradually change if left on. If you change any setting and hit apply, when you return to Time/Date you get 1970/1/1 12:00. When I just unbricked my Sansa, the clock was fine and --amazing-- current. Despite my repeated battery drains and removals, it still had something close to the current date and time. When I tried correcting things is when it just said NO.

.
Looked through the posts this forum dating back to 2009, but haven't found anything like this. (There was a complaint somewhere else on the website, but not under "Repairing and Upgrading Rockbox Capable Players" -- and it went unanswered.)

I'm hoping someone knows what might be going on. And if you have time, here's the TL;DR version of how this happened in the first place:

I believe I bricked it in the first place trying to hot-swap the microSD card while it was charging in a mobile USB docking device. The microSD cards had no issue, but the Sansa (in Original Firmware) would no longer have the correct font to display "now connected" -- it would just be a series of blocks. When I tried connecting it to my PC, Windows and PuppyLinux could not discover the device.

RockBox would load just fine however, but a few of the files saved to the Sansa (and not the FAT32 microSD) had their names completely mangled and I couldn't delete them off the device without freezing up RB (ver 2.x, bootloader 1.0). So, on one of the lone instances Windows recognized the device, I formatted the entire thing... big mistake as that meant I couldn't have access to Rockbox at all and the OF wouldn't get past the "Sansa" opening movie.

Opening up my Sansa v2 (it was a v2; the Flash chip was on the board, the board said 1.5+ -- and there was something fuzzy on the pen-battery inside), I did the "short these two points while mounting the drive" to unbrick it. It did work. The Sansa was recognized as a USB device. I was able to flash it with the latest SanDisk firmware (v03.01.16A) and install RockBox 3.6 (Bootloader 1.27) on it.

And I thought that was it.

Except the fade-out on the wheel didn't work so well; the blue light would dim and flicker, but not turn off. The OF was randomly activating the Hold button. I decided to format the machine using the OF format option, re-install the Sansa firmware, OF format again, and then install RockBox.

And here I am. I'll admit that my Sansa can still play music and games, and I'm satisfied with that. But I'd like to have all the features available if possible -- the mic on this baby is amazing!

[funman]

I can't use the voice-recorder -- somehow that fixed itself screwed up again. I can record in the OF (I've tested for files up to a minute long), but if I try to delete a recording, it freezes up. If I go back, I can see the recording has been deleted, but the Voice playlist says its still there. (The OF freezes up when trying to delete files in general.) In RB, a few seconds after entering Recorder, the screen freezes. (But the screen-saver still responds to key-presses.)

Are you using 3.6 ? This is fixed in current builds

[rekkataichou]

Thanks for the reply.
I should be. (Yup, boot-screen says 3.6.) I installed this over the weekend using the 1.2.7 installer. I was a bit worried about manually installing on an unbricked system.

If I can immediately start recording, the system won't lock up. But if I leave the recorder on for a few seconds (3~9) with the recording bars in flux, it is very likely to lock up.

I say lock up because I am just testing it now and, while the screen is stuck, the recorder is still "active." As the RB screen is stuck on the Recording bars, I can hear the amplified sound coming from my headphones.

I saw from FlySpray someone was having this issue with their Fuze this week.

I can't use the voice-recorder -- somehow that fixed itself screwed up again. I can record in the OF (I've tested for files up to a minute long), but if I try to delete a recording, it freezes up. If I go back, I can see the recording has been deleted, but the Voice playlist says its still there. (The OF freezes up when trying to delete files in general.) In RB, a few seconds after entering Recorder, the screen freezes. (But the screen-saver still responds to key-presses.)

Are you using 3.6 ? This is fixed in current builds

[funman]

If you want recording just use a current build, they work fine and USB works with rockbox, no need to reboot.

[rekkataichou]

If you want recording just use a current build, they work fine and USB works with rockbox, no need to reboot.

Thanks, but I am already using the current build. And unfortunately recording does not work fine with my recently un-bricked Sansa e250 v2.

If I do not immediately scroll to the "record" button and start recording when I enter the recorder menu, the system will lock up and I will need to reboot.

When I connect Rockbox to a Windows PC with the select button held down, my Sansa gets recharged. Is it normal that Windows does not recognize it as a USB device? (If I don't hold the select button, the OF starts up -- and once the database updates itself -- is recognized by Windows XP.)

My theory as to how I bricked my Sansa in the first place was that I was using a USB wall-charger to charge it instead of  the proprietary cable and a computer.

[funman]

When I connect Rockbox to a Windows PC with the select button held down, my Sansa gets recharged. Is it normal that Windows does not recognize it as a USB device? (If I don't hold the select button, the OF starts up

If the OF starts when you plug USB (without holding select), you're running 3.6, not the current build.

Thanks, but I am already using the current build.

3.6 is the last release, "current build" is what you get on the left of the website, which is the source code built after each source code change (and there are several changes daily)

[rekkataichou]

I see now, thanks!

You're right. This does fix the recording issues (and gives the RB Sansa a Multimedia mode). That just leaves the clock and the radio... which might be a hardware issue since these problems are both carried over to the OF.

That leaking pen battery (I'll need to find a replacement) I saw when I opened mine up might be the cause of a resetting clock (as the OF does) -- though I wouldn't know why RB would have a stuck clock.

3.6 is the last release, "current build" is what you get on the left of the website, which is the source code built after each source code change (and there are several changes daily)

[funman]

Just supposing: the RTC might always return the same date, but the OF might fake the time with its periodical counter instead of reading the RTC each second/minute.

[rekkataichou]

Just supposing: the RTC might always return the same date, but the OF might fake the time with its periodical counter instead of reading the RTC each second/minute.

Sorry funman, but you'll have to break that down for me.

If the Sansa's real-time clock is dead/stuck, wouldn't the OF clock keep its "fake time" consistent? When I adjusted the "fake time", why would the OF clock suddenly flash back to a much earlier year and date?

• For example, the "fake time" in the OF starts at 2007/9/24 12:00.
• I wait until 12:03 to change the date/time to 2010/09/07 8:00. I apply the changes.
• The OF "fake time" now reads 1970/1/1 12:00.
• I wait until 12:03 to change update the time data again... when I apply the changes, the OF "fake time" resets to 1970/1/1 12:00
• Should the fake time at least update (until I power the system off)?

.
The RB RTC just holds steady at 2006/02/07 6:28:15... and doesn't budge a second. (I wonder if there's any significance to that time?)
Edit
Fiddling around with it some more, if I edit the OF clock, it too freezes (1/1/1970 0:00) without budging.

Also noticed that the OF radio would only tune in 0.2 increments instead of 0.1. Plus in the r27994-100903 build I have, entering the Radio freezes the screen, but as I said before, the wheel/buttons still cause the screen to fade in and if I had an application (such as Battery Bench or Music) running, it would still run in the background. The device would not connect in  Rockbox Media mode if I attached the data cable to it while it was frozen.

[mc2739]

Have you tried doing a firmware upgrade with an unpatched Original Firmware since your recovery?  If not, it would be a good idea to try that.

It may also be a good idea to do a format before installing Rockbox again.

[rekkataichou]

Have you tried doing a firmware upgrade with an unpatched Original Firmware since your recovery?  If not, it would be a good idea to try that.

It may also be a good idea to do a format before installing Rockbox again.

Well, after I unbricked the system, I did a format using the OF before installing Rockbux 3.6 using the installer and the Sansa e200 v2.0 3.01.16a BIOS.

I then did an OF format and reinstalled the 3.6 Rockbox build, again using the installer.

The upgraded to the nightly release of Rockbox by updating each file and folder.

Recently tried to install the OF v2.0 3.01.14a -- which let me modify FM radio frequency by "0.1" instead of "0.2" -- but didn't receive any signal and didn't fix the time/date problem.

Re-installed OF v2.0 3.01.16a, and then Rockbox 3.6 over that, and then the newest nightly build over that. Still no change in date/time/radio.

I will try getting a new pen-battery and opening this up next weekend to install it.

[rekkataichou]

I think I may be running into a brick wall with this issue.

Various internal pics for the e200 v2 series.

I found something related to the "pen battery" I saw on the PCB before re-opening it, and it turns out it was actually a capacitor.

And similar to the capacitor in the Fuze, once that goes, the ULP oscillator chip (that I can't find) does as well. And once that goes it takes the radio with it.

And this was something that gradually happens to the system as well; I could have spotted this earlier, as the internal clock was never accurate since week 1, and tried sending it back. Now there's nothing that I can do to save it now except de-solder an oscillator and capacitor off another model.

I did buy a backup off eBay last week, a V1 at that, which works very well in that it still has a working radio and clock. However Rockboy doesn't work as well in V1 (would let me modify controls & screen orientation on the V2). Maybe I'm better off getting a Fuze v1/v2?