Sansa Died -> Revived -> Doubled Memory

[NonPlayerChar]

I am not one who posts much but I am always in the IRC.

In a huge fit of irony, I had just purchased a warranty on my new phone (SquareTrade) and I began to browse through my old still outstanding warranties. One for a Sansa View 8gb and one for a Sansa e280. My thoughts found their way into the IRC.

(11:38:16 PM) NonPlayerChar1: I dont understand, I keep getting warranties. Yet, my devices never die.
(11:38:48 PM) NonPlayerChar1: One would think, that eventually... purely statistically speaking I'd break one of em

As I stated already, in a huge fit of irony, just a few seconds later I grabbed my sansa view, slipped it into its silicon case. Went to power it on and.... nothing. Not even the blue ring. Strange I thought. I plug it into my computer, still no blue ring. Even stranger it detected that a device was plugged in, but windows failed to recognize it.

I figured the battery must be dead. Conviently, several months ago I purchased a broken 16gb View for $15 hoping I could get it working. The damage was beyond my capabilities. Remembering this, I bust opened the 16gb view and removed is battery. When I did that I saw the 16gb of flash memory just chilling on the back, unscathed on this broken View. I carefully removed it and placed it aside.

I began to open up my 8gb, carefully mind you, just in case it was more than the battery and I needed to redeem my warranty. (Thumbnails are excellent case seperators btw) As I took apart the 8gb view, I noticed the 8gb of flash memory also just sitting there. I asked in the chat if one could simply swap out the memory. AdvComp didn't know either. So why sit and wait when you could try and do. Unplugged the battery, swapped the memory, replaced the battery and.........


Great sucess!
Everything works perfectly fine. {other than some grossly old firmware} I reassembled my View and took the pictures.


To prove this truely is an 8gb View.


The 8gb (now 16) view next to the broken 16gb (now 8) view dissasembled.

This bit of irony turned out to be a blessing, I just doubled the memory of my lovable view ^.^
Thought y'all would get a kick out of the irony, or at least of the simplicty of the mod.

I expect all the AS IS / FOR PARTS Sansa Views 16gb and 32gb to be gone of ebay in a matter of seco..... now.

Edit: I loosely connected the 16gb one back together simply so it fit in its case again. Plugged the 8gb memory into the 16gb. Several minutes later... I look over to the side desk and see the 16gb has turned itself on. Blue wheel illumination, nothing else. Screen still blank (as it never worked) and nothing else working. So... I really don't know what is going on anymore... either way I had some fun on a Saturday night and effectively doubled my Views storage capacity.

[CrowdAds]

[advcomp2019]

Great to see this. Hope it does not happen again.

[Andreas]

What does the flash chip look like, since you were able to swap them? Or are you just good at soldering?

[WalkGood]

Nice move NonPlayerChar!

See ya in #anythingbutipod irc

[advcomp2019]

Cptn, here is what the insides look like: http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php?...4967#msg104967

[NonPlayerChar]

The 8gb flash memory module is visible in the second picture. I could link the higher resolution version of said picture, only problem being that it was shot by a 3mp phone's camera. On top of that, adv linked the scans of the View above, which includes the 16gb memory module.

If anyone is interested in how this is working:
First day or so I experienced a lot of slow downs to the point of the now playing screen was roughly 4 songs behind and buttons took 1 minute before there was any response. However, after that first day everything seems to have leveled out and it works just as it did before.

Sadly this view doesn't see as much use as it used to, as my phone has a much larger screen and has taken over all functions I used to rely on from the View or my e280.
Long trips should give it some usage though, provided I don't get too into mobile AOE... again.

[trikon000]

I'm finding the view to be more of A BIG dissapointment and I got the 32GB one. I'm probably gonna pick up two 16GB nanos and a two 8GB e280s, if I can find them being sold. I can't do audiobooks that I rip with no tags with the current setup. the way it treats tagless mp3s as not there is irking me to no end.