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Semi-Random Hang on Sansa Fuze v2

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ewhac:
I have a Sansa Fuze v2 (refurb) that I picked up off of Woot some time ago.  It has developed an annoying tendency to hang while reading bits of internal flash.  It currently has Rockbox 3.10 on it, but this has been happening since 3.8.  (I am using straight 3.10; I am not using the developmental version that has USB support enabled.)

This issue typically manifests as follows:  I set the Fuze to USB MSC mode, then copy files to it from my Linux laptop.  I then unmount the Fuze, reboot it, and let Rockbox come up.  Sometimes it will lock up at this point as Rockbox scans for new media in the background (the little disk scan icon in the upper right corner comes on).  Other times it will lock up when I attempt to play one of the files I just copied to the Fuze.  Once hung, the UI becomes completely unresponsive, and I have to hold the power switch for ten-odd seconds to shut it off.  Once it is possible to hang the Fuze in this way, it is entirely repeatable.

Now, if I remount the Fuze on my laptop and delete the files I just copied over, then the lockup disappears.  What this suggests to me is that certain bits of flash memory inside the Fuze are confusing Rockbox somehow, causing it to hang.

If I do a media scan of the Fuze (e.g. 'dd if=/dev/sdb of=/dev/null bs=1M', it completes without incident.  Also, if I boot into the original firmware, the newly-copied files play perfectly, suggesting that the OF has no difficulty whatsoever reading/writing the flash media.

I've also run 'fsck.vfat' on the Fuze.  The only hint that anything might be wrong is that that primary and backup FATs differ, but are reported as intact.  When run against the primary FAT, fsck.vfat reports no errors.

I also tried rolling back the OF from the latest version (2.03.33) to the immediately previous version (2.03.31), in the vague hope that Rockbox's mods to the OF would work better.  And yes, I did completely erase and reformat the Fuze using the OF, and then reloaded Rockbox and all my music.  No luck; the problem persists.

So far, I've dealt with this issue primarily by avoiding it, i.e. loading as much music in to the thing until it starts locking up, then backing off until it runs again.  Obviously, I would prefer to be able to use all 4G of flash without having to worry about this.  And yes, I suppose I could shove an 8G Micro-SD card in the side of the thing, but that seems kinda lame.

Any hints as to what might be amiss, and what I might be able to do about it?

ewhac:
Seriously? No response after three weeks?  Is the only path to deeper insights via a JTAG unit and a logic analyzer?

As much as I like Rockbox, this kind of thing is pretty much a show-stopper.  I appreciate that the OEMs are being pissy little children in refusing to document their hardware, but surely there must be theories as to what the underlying cause of the observed problem is, even if there's nothing that currently can be done about it.

saratoga:

--- Quote from: ewhac on April 16, 2012, 02:58:33 PM ---I appreciate that the OEMs are being pissy little children in refusing to document their hardware, but surely there must be theories as to what the underlying cause of the observed problem is, even if there's nothing that currently can be done about it.

--- End quote ---

My theory is that your player has bad flash memory and you need to buy a new one. 

ewhac:

--- Quote from: saratoga on April 16, 2012, 03:43:48 PM ---My theory is that your player has bad flash memory and you need to buy a new one.
--- End quote ---

I'd agree with you, except that the original firmware isn't having any trouble reading and playing the files.  If the flash memory were bad, I'd expect both Rockbox and the OF to have trouble.  But the OF exhibits no problems, whereas Rockbox hangs.

saratoga:

--- Quote from: ewhac on April 16, 2012, 07:38:42 PM --- But the OF exhibits no problems, whereas Rockbox hangs.

--- End quote ---

Maybe its just more tolerant of disk errors?  I doubt we try very hard to handle those. 

Of course, if you have some better idea, feel free to investigate it :)

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