abi>>forums - Corrupted version.txt/Fw update not working in recovery mode? The solution !!!

e2tplus:
e2tplus is nothing but e200tool with ability to read from and write to NAND memory (daughter board).
My friend justshams came to me asking if i could repair his player, whose 16MB recovery drive, he had formatted. It was showing a corrupted version.txt and would not format or get updated. It would just be stuck in the recovery mode after the usb cable was unplugged.
I have given a detailed description of the problem here
http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php?topic=18197.0
Now, it turns out that we do have a solution and that solution is e2tplus.

I have attached both the tool (e2tplus.zip) and all the source files (e2tplus-dev.zip) . Below is a brief guide on how to go about unbricking your sansa player. Best of luck.

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A WORD OF CAUTION:

This tool is meant to be only for those who are able to get into recovery mode but are not able to update or format their players(using sansa.fmt trick) , because their player stops responding after the usb cable is unplugged. They also have a corrupted version.txt file in the 16MB FORMAT recovery drive. Check out the following threads to see if you have the same problem
http://www.anythingbutipod.com/forum...ad.php?t=26569
http://www.anythingbutipod.com/forum...ad.php?t=28688
http://www.anythingbutipod.com/forum...ad.php?t=26866
http://www.anythingbutipod.com/forum...ad.php?t=23729
http://www.anythingbutipod.com/forum...ad.php?t=19454
Remember, THIS METHOD IS ONLY RECOMMENDED FOR THOSE WHO HAVE TRIED ALL OTHER SOLUTIONS AND STILL COULD NOT GET THEIR SANSA E200 TO WORK.

This tool has only been tested on a e260v1 (4GB). So, i'm not sure if it works perfectly on other e200 versions.

You need to be familiar with using the e200tool on linux. If you are not, i suggest you read the following to get acquainted with both e200tool and linux
http://fixmysansa.blogspot.com/

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Procedure:

For justshams' sansa e260v1 (4 GB), all i needed to do was this:

1. Connect the player via usb to the computer in manufacturing mode.

2. In a terminal, navigate to the directory which contains the e200tool, extracted from the package i have attached, and type the following command

Code:

$ sudo ./e200tool init

The wheel light should blink once, to show that the above command ran successfully. If not, remove usb cable, shutdown the player and reconnect as in step 1.

3. Now, run the following command

Code:

$ sudo ./e200tool nanddetect

The above command will give you the starting sector and number of sectors present in the Hidden partition (the one which contains the bootloader and the firmware on the daughter board)

4. [OPTIONAL] Once the details of the hidden partition is known, we can actually write a working hidden partition dumped previously, right onto the player , but just to make sure that we have the right addresses and also, to see everything is working fine, lets do a hidden partition read. So, run this
$ sudo ./e200tool nandread (start_sector) (number_of_sectors) (outfile)

where start_sector and number_of_sectors are obtained by running "nanddetect" command as in step 3.

For an e260v1 with 4gb storage, i ran the following command

Code:

$ sudo ./e200tool nandread 7813120 40960 hidden_part.bin

You can explore the hidden_part.bin file using a tool called hexedit to verify its file structure as shown here
http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/vie...mwarePartition

5. Now, we come to the crucial step, and i will warn you again, YOU DO THIS AT YOUR OWN RISK, PLEASE DONT BLAME ME IF YOUR PLAYER GOES BUST. But as far as i have seen the sansa e200v1 is very robust and wont conk out until it is damaged physically. Still you have been warned.

You will need a hidden partition dump file to execute this step. For a e260v1 with 4GB memory, i used the one found here
http://daniel.haxx.se/sansa/sansa-sda2.gz
Extract a file named sansa-sda2, into the same directory as your e200tool.

I am not sure if this file will work for other versions like e250(2GB), e270(6GB) or e280(8GB). You will have to request someone who owns these players to provide you with the dump file, at anythingbutipod forums or at the rockbox forums.

Finally, run this command
$ sudo ./e200tool nandwrite (infile) (start_sector) (number_of_sectors)

where the infile is a hidden partition dump file and the start_sector and number_of_sectors are the ones obtained in step 3.

Again, For an e260v1 with 4gb storage, i ran the following command

Code:

$ sudo ./e200tool nandwrite sansa-sda2 7813120 40960

Now, a small note here, do not worry if this command fails to write the whole 20MB partition to the player on the first try. You may get a "connection timed out" error. This has happened to me too. I just powered down the player(by holding power button for 15 secs) and repeated steps 1, 2 and 5 to get the player up and working perfectly.

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Credits:
MrH , for having written such a wonderful tool which acted as a fantastic framework for this extension.
Rockbox community, for providing the NAND access code and other development tools (YOU ROCK !!!)
JustShams, the guy who bricked his sansa e260v1 and called me in to unbrick it :P
Linux, especially ubuntu, for being such a great development environment.

If you have any doubts , please feel free to PM me. I can also be found at the #anythingbutipod and #rockbox irc channels.
Hope this works for you :)