Third Party > Repairing and Upgrading Rockbox Capable Players

Sansa Clip+ (Clip Plus) is Wiped, Having Trouble Installing Functional Firmware

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brandonpiper12-2887:
Alright, so here is the issue I am having:

I am following this tutorial:  http://www.wikihow.com/Unlock-a-Federal-Prison-Sansa-MP3-Player

I have already repartitioned and formatted the device. The BOP firmware is wiped. Basically I am stuck at step 5 of the above tutorial. I am trying to flash either the original sansa firmware or rockbox firmware. Whatever will get me to be able to use my mp3.

I got to step 5 on that tutorial and the links there link to malware. I could not find a "patched rockbox firmware" image so diverted from the wikiHow tutorial and I used the RockBox Utility. The Clip+ was not able to boot up after reporting a successful install. It is not able to boot up at this point, but Windows is recognizing it as a 7.38 GB USB Mass Storage Device.

I tried the Sansa Updater to restore the factory firmware but I am getting: "No updatable Sansa product has been recognized." I also tried the manual RockBox install instructions of just unzipping the file to the device.

At this point I am guessing I need to reformat the device, find an Original Factory Firmware image for the Clip+ and flash it to the device.

I need some help on this. If you need any more information let me know.

Here is a list of the files I downloaded for this endeavor:

saratoga:
I don't think those instructions are complete, and I'm a little skeptical that the author actually succeeded using those steps, but in theory when in recovery mode you can flash the regular firmware to your player.

You can't use rockbox utility or the Sandisk firmware updater though. In that recovery mode you have raw access to the device nand storage so you can only flash disk images. What have you done so far?

saratoga:
Sorry, just noticed that you copied rockbox files to the device.  This will completely screw up the NAND, which basically puts in you in the "bricked" player situation.  Take a look at these instructions:

http://www.rockbox.org/wiki/SansaAMSUnbrick

The guide you linked above suggests that just flashing a normal firmware binary to the clip+ will allow it to boot, so you could try that rather than looking for a multi-GB NAND image.

brandonpiper12-2887:
Thank you guys for the help. I'm back at it again trying to tackle this damn mp3.

Success! I think I got it! The WikiHow instructions do work, but they are incomplete. It is also geared towards Linux users. With more research I was able to do it in Windows. Also I was having trouble downloading files from datafilehost.com. (you need to uncheck the little gray shield)

I knew it wasn't bricked because I was still able to browse the mp3 in Windows Explorer when the device was powered DOWN. When it was powered on, Windows would not recognize it.

So what I did since my last post was: I did a quick format using right click>properties in my computer. I did this to wipe the mp3 and start over. I used the right click method because I did not feel like going back into diskpart. I then powered down and plugged it back in.

I then used Win32DiskImager to write the patched-rockbox.bin file to the mp3. Unplugged and powered down. I was able to boot into sansa on the second attempt. Windows was having trouble recognizing the mp3 so I unplugged and powered down. Did this twice. On the third plug in, windows recognized it, but I could not browse the mp3 without doing a quick format. After the quick format and another power down, power up and plug in, the Sansa updater came on automatically. (This part of the process was glitchy for me. I was getting a message on the mp3 player that was saying "FAT system is corrupted, connect to a computer" the other error message I got was "*PANIC* usb-drv: EP0 completion while waiting for SETUP" this is probably why Windows forced me to do another quick format.)

I don't feel as good about it because I was having trouble with the process and it may not have been a perfectly "clean" install. As long as it works though I am good.

My only question is: Out of an 8gb mp3 player, how much should be available for use? It is only saying 7.14 gb available out of 7.35 gb. Before the last format it was saying 7.4 gb. Is some of the space being taken up by junk files as part of my crappy install?

If so I suppose I could go back to step 1 and put it MSC mode using the two pins on the PCB, repartition it, and reformat it in FAT32.

Right now my next step is to try the RockBox Utility and see if I can customize it a little bit. I would also like to post all my findings in a later post to help those trying to crack the BOP mp3 player.

brandonpiper12-2887:
Update:

I was a little premature. It was not able to boot until I copied the clppa.bin file to the root. It seems to be functioning normally now.

Once again, is 7.35gb of space normal?

I will post results once I try the RockBox Utility.

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