Inside the X7

[Future Tomorrow]

Major edit. I'll tell this story when I calm down. Too much negativity never helped anything or anyone...Enjoy the pics which may be able to help someone else in the future.

[CrowdAds]

[The DarkSide]

Wait,...WHAT HAPPENED!!! It's DESTROYED?!?!?!

[dfkt]

Whoa, waiting for the backstory. I see the battery got pregnant.

That's all that's in there, the little two-sided PCB? I don't see a Wolfson DAC anywhere, only the TCC SoC, weird. Or is the chip close to the battery leads a Wolfson? Could you take a more in focus pic of that side of the PCB?

[WalkGood]

Battery definitely doesn’t look good, so what happened? Can you put it back together with a new battery? Would think if it’s defective they’d replace it, /me waiting patiently for the story …

[Marvin the Martian]

[nodirectionhome]

is that fixable?

[Future Tomorrow]

@TDS - what happened is I did not take well to the second X7 being stuck in the same exact place as the first even though I was using different music files, there is no MAC or Apple product involvement and I've run MP3Val at least 15 times already.

So I decided to open it, void my warranty and take pictures to see if the photos may aid in getting the X7 added to the TCCtool list and try contacting it's author again. There's more to this story but it's probably best if I leave it as is for now. The device as of this morning cannot be fixed due to the damage it has sustained and it's sad because I had a rather nice chat with Export Prive 20 minutes ago and they were willing to take the device back but this time for a full refund. Whoops...

I acted too quickly and beyond the photos for TCCtool am not sure what exactly I was hoping to accomplish by opening the X7. Literally slapped myself on the forehead after my conversation with Export Prive.

This also marks my official departure from supporting anything COWON until they make some serious changes that work for the consumer experience and not against it. IMHO a device should not brick when it encounters a corrupt file or junk file and this has more to do with how COWON logic for their players is written. Now I don't know enough to fairly elaborate on this more but I feel COWON can do much better and if not then please provide an official unbricker tool which you support or get behind TCCtool and support that. Best case scenario a corrupt file just would not be played by the player. Worst case scenario a message comes up during the loading screen and tells you to connect the player and remove X file...but guess what? The player has got to be accessible for any of those to happen. With COWON it just gets stuck in a place which doesn't do anyone any good.

@dfkt - I'll upload some better pictures a little later that hopefully shows the DAC but I could not and still cannot clearly make out where these are. It is odd indeed but a PCB pic from that side will follow shortly.

@WalkGood - unfortunately there is no more putting this one back together as a slight accident when opening it pretty much sealed that possibility dead shut. I've opened plenty of gadgets before but I'd really echo some caution when working around the glass of the X7 even with the correct opening tool kit.

I could have also maybe been a little more gentle.

To everyone else that has asked, please see my full response to WalkGood concerning whether or not the device can be fixed. I can also say that for such a small company being no where close to standing in the shadows of Amazon I would/will use Export Prive again and they can't be responsible for COWON doing the right thing. That needs to come from the users that buy COWON products and the longer we support this nonsense without a clear voice of unhappiness then we're telling manufacturers everything is okay when it fact it is not ok.

[The DarkSide]

Wow, FT, sorry. I mean, that's all I can really say ATM. Well, that SUX also comes to mind.

[Future Tomorrow]

Originally Posted by The DarkSide

Wow, FT, sorry. I mean, that's all I can really say ATM. Well, that SUX also comes to mind.

Thanks mate and yes, I think your comment sums it up pretty well. It seems the J3 and X7 just don't like my taste in music

[rohit3192]

Untimely death of Cowon X7.
Seems like carnage after blast.

[Norgei]

Hello Future Tomorrow,

Sad history for you , I sympathized. Me even I have this cowon, and I will not like that arrives to me.

Just a small requette for you, you would have more detailed pictures of the HDD ? Or if you don't have this pictures, how was plugged the HDD on the pcb ? Soldered or connected with a detachable connector ? And the connector of the HDD, how was it ? This was SATA ? IDE or another kind of connector ?

Thanks for your answer (and sorry for my poor english, I'm french ).

[budgie2001]

Hi sad about your X7 I have a similer problem Droped mine (Daa) pixels on the screen messed up screen not broken, and can only acces the flash memory you recken it will be a trash it or could it be fixed ??? might pull it apart for a look see.

Im a new be on this site so sorry if I'm butting in. Cheers