Sansa e200 on MacOS X?

[mdnet]

Hi,

sorry if this is answered elsewhere, the forum's search did not bring up anything when searching for mac.

After the e200 worked so easily with Linux, I thought using it with MacOS X will be no problem at all. To my surprise, I was totally wrong. The e200 is in MSC mode, but when connected to a Mac it will not show up as a USB drive (which I was expecting).
dmesg tells me, that the USBEHCI saw a transaction with a timeout. As I am no Mac expert, I have no clue where to start. Searching the Internet did not help.

Is there anyone out there using the e200 on his/her Mac and is able to assist me here. It's really strange...

Thanks,
Marcel

[CrowdAds]

[mdnet]

Just to answer my own question: While browsing the sandisk website, I found a statement that the e260 has no Mac support.
I do not know why this is so, in the end it should behave like a USB drive, but for some reason it is not, which is extremely sad.

[dippy17888]

I use mine on a mac and it works fine, no problems at all.

[oregon]

Originally Posted by dippy17888

I use mine on a mac and it works fine, no problems at all.

I've used mine with a Mac, and sometimes the e260 icon won't show up. But sometimes it does. Other than that, dragging and dropping files works well.

[janm]

This happened a number of firmwares ago. They broke some USB functionality and it has been that way since. I was really happy with the device up until that point, I'll probably replace it if rockbox is more than a few months away.

[andcheese]

I've had NO repeatable GOOD luck with my E270 since they went to firmware 1.02.xx. The 1.01.xx worked fine. I haven't tried the 1.03.01.

bburge

[kennyj]

http://www.wentnet.com/projects/xnjb/

Works fine for me with MTP mode. It's not quite as straightforward as having something that the OS either recognizes as or treats like a disk drive, but it does get the job done.

[wtanksleyjr]

You need to downgrade your firmware to 1.01.11; anything else doesn't work with the Mac (except the alpha version of the new 1.03, but that's REALLY buggy). I spent quite a while playing with all the different versions to confirm this...

Once you do this, it will "just work".

Visit http://daniel.haxx.se/sansa/mi4.html to download the 1.01.11A firmware. You can follow the procedure other people give to upgrade -- it'll work.

[buugmenot]

If you have a newer firmware version that makes your Sansa unmountable on a Mac, this work-around might do the trick for you. You have to do this every time you want to connect the Sansa to a Mac.

1. If the Sansa is in MSC mode, put it in MTP mode.
2. Plug the USB cable into your Mac. The Sansa screen will say "Connecting" with the moving arrows, the battery will charge, but nothing else will happen.
3. Unplug the USB cable from the Mac and put the Sansa in MSC mode.
4. Plug the USB cable back into the same USB port. This time, the screen will say "Connected" with no moving arrows and there will be a slight delay, after which the Sansa will say "Writing" and the volume mounts on the desktop.
5. Use your app of choice or simply drag-and-drop away. I recommend the free SyncTunes (http://www.nesfield.co.uk/synctunes/), as you can set it up so that it will organize the files from an iTunes playlist into artist and album folders on the Sansa.
6. Eject the volume on the Mac. The Sansa screen will change from "Writing" to "Connected." Unplug the USB cable and you're done. (The Sansa then does a system restart followed by a database refresh, but I assume that's supposed to happen. Either way, no harm seems to result.)

This process seems to work every time (who knows why) with the following setup:
Sansa e270
Firmware: 1.02.12A
Mac OS X 10.4.9

Since you have to do this every time you want to connect the Sansa, the work-around is not for everyone. But if you don't connect very often, don't have a Windows machine to do a firmware downgrade, or don't want to do a firmware downgrade, this may be your option until SanDisk fixes whatever they broke (if they ever do).

NOTE: For the first successful connection attempt, you may have to do: MSC mode, plug in, unplug; MTP mode, plug in, unplug; MSC mode plug in, for the volume to mount. The above 6 steps are expanded from a post I found here: http://www.wentnet.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=886. It was a surprise when the Sansa mounted for the first time and I wasn't paying close enough attention to what exact steps I had taken (or in what mode the Sansa had started). But all subsequent connections require only the 2x mode-change/plug-in/unplug method above.

Also, if you only need to charge the Sansa from a Mac, you don't have to do the above steps and can just plug it in, but that may disable the computer's USB port until a restart.

I hope this helps! I still have no idea why this works.

[kennyj]

Funny thing is, I grabbed a couple of e200s last week and sat down in a Mac lab with OS versions ranging from OS 9 to 10.4.8, and though I often had to try every USB port on a given computer before I could find one that works, I was eventually able to make each e200 work on every Mac in MSC mode. One had firmware 1.0.12A, one had 1.2.15A, and one had 1.2.18A.

Additionally, I was able to use XNJB on each system with each player in MTP but it seemed to be just as fickle about the connection as when in MSC mode.

I think the problem is actually that Macs have fickle USB hardware (or at least, it's fickle in different ways than it is on most PCs) and the e200 doesn't do a good job of compensating for it on its own. Some of that is probably firmware-related, but I don't think the newer firmwares do anything to break Mac compatibility, they just aren't as nice about it.

[matches]

I have an e280, and I tried the MTP-MSC work-around. It seemed to work, the volume mounted on my desktop and I used SyncTunes to move music to the sansa. The process seemed to work fine, but when i looked through the music on the sansa, none of the music that i transferred was on it. Just the original demo songs. Maybe I'm missing something, I don't know. Does anyone have any suggestions?

[artware]

Upgraded to 01.00.12A, this made a more stable MSC mount, works everytime.
Mac OSX 10.2.8.

[ddollhoff]

For those who say on a mac it works just fine, are you able to watch video? I'm able to listen to music, but so far every video I've dragged and dropped into the Video folder when I'm using the Sansa, the video folder says empty. Any help? What formats can you use?

[cpchan]

Originally Posted by ddollhoff

What formats can you use?

MJPEGB codec in a Quicktime container. The video is rotated 90 degrees clockwise with the size of 176:220. IIRC the audio is PCM You should be able to do this with Quicktime Pro.

YMMV, I don't use the OF.

Charles

[ddollhoff]

Thanks so much, I'm actually getting the hang of this. Now if only I could charge the damn battery.....

[oregon]

Originally Posted by ddollhoff

Thanks so much, I'm actually getting the hang of this. Now if only I could charge the damn battery.....

Use your iPod charging brick with your sansa cable. Works great (assuming you have one).

[ddollhoff]

Unfortunately, I don't even know what that is. But I know a few people with iPods maybe they have one. What is it?

[CoHPhasor]

There are wall chargers for Ipods, and they could work for the Sansa.
(It has a wall plug on one side, and a USB plug on the other, do NOT get one that has an "ipod" connector as even though it FITS in a Sansa the Ipod conn is wired differently and WILL fry your sansa!)

Wall charger on ebay

Wall AND Car Charger

Wall, Car Charger, AND extra retractable USB cable for Sansa

Any of these will work, and I can say are fairly cheap.
Ebay has LOTS of stuff for sansa cheap, I got 2 silicone cases/armbands (1black, 1..pink) a faux leather flip case, the cable, the wall and car chargers for $23 delivered, so trust me, you have options.