Issues with rockbox - firmware corrupt?

[bronk]

Hi everyone,

I can't say for sure what cause the issue as this fuze (version 1) belongs to my young son. But, here is the problem and what I have done to attempt to correct it.

My boy handed me his fuze with the words 'plug usb cable' on the screen. So, I did. Then the display read: bootloader usb mode. I unplugged the device and the display read file not found.

Sure, of course.

Then I plugged the device back in holding the rewind section of the wheel down to load the fuze firmware. It loaded but the display told me that musicdb couldn't be reloaded and that I had to delete 90mb of stuff. After this the device powered off.

Pffft. I disconnected and reconnected starting back into the fuze firmware. The device (msc mode) appeared in my file manager so I tried to reinstall rockbox. No dice. Upon loading I got a checksum error.

Enter gparted!

I formatted the device as well as the MBR. After I did this I was able to get into the settings of the default fuze. I attempted to both remove and reinstall the rockbox firmware a number of times. Rockbox installed without error but I still cannot boot into it. Files missing or the checksum error again.

I downloaded a new copy of the original fuze firmware and tried to install rockbox again (after uninstalling it). No dice. Same checksum error.

I went through the fuze options to format and return the device to defaults. Still cannot remove vestiges of rockbox firmware nor can I reinstall it and get a working rockbox.

How can I completely remove all traces of the rockbox bootloader?

If more information is needed I will provide the details that I can. Again, I have no idea what the boy did to get his fuze in such a state so please don't ask. I hate not being able to answer a question.

I run Debian. I have windowsxp installed through virtualbox and at no time did windows even see the drive so I could attempt to use the sansa update utility. Debian sees the drive all day.

Thank you for assistance.

--BK

[CrowdAds]

[WalkGood]

Originally Posted by bronk

... How can I completely remove all traces of the rockbox bootloader? ...

You need to install an unpatched version of the original firmware and if the .rockbox folder is still in the root, you need to delete it. Make sure player is connected in MSC mode, download firmware for V1 from the Sandisk forum or directly from SanDisk, unzip the firmware to the root of the player, disconnect and allow firmware update to take place.

While I'm not 100% sure the first part of your post sounded to me that all that was missing was the .rockbox folder which is needed for it to boot up to rb.

Edit: Here is the link to the firmware: v1 firmware

[bronk]

Hi WalkGood,

I rm -rf (deleted) the .rockbox folder a number of times. Thank you for the link. I was using version .23, I will try this again with version .22 from the link you provided.


I left out the part where one of my attempts included simply dropping the fuze firmware into the empty fuze directory (following a format) in order to get the device to 'repair' itself. That didn't work. But, as I just wrote, that was with version .23.

I'll let you know soon what happened.

Thanks again

--BK

PS - Is there a significant difference between the versions .22 and .23 firmware? I ask because I my boy takes his music from my drive (ampache is cool) and I do use oggs and flacs as well as mp3s.

[WalkGood]

Originally Posted by bronk

... PS - Is there a significant difference between the versions .22 and .23 firmware? I ask because I my boy takes his music from my drive (ampache is cool) and I do use oggs and flacs as well as mp3s.

I don't know about differences between .22 & .23 as I have various Clips and not the fuze. There should be release notes about the versions you can look up. If what I stated about doesn't work, I don't know that I could help, but reading here should give you some additional information.