Sansa e200 and Mac?

[arch85]

Thanks Amblin!

Yeah -- you can run windows on the newer macs but that seems to defy the whole purpose of having a mac ... also it is sorta stupid if you have to boot into windows just to sync your mp3 player (which even in Windows a lot of users seem to be having problems with).

Also I forget how the disks worked ... not sure if you could access your mac disk from windows when u boot into windows via boot-camp. Because other wise you would have to copy all the songs from the mac partition to the windows partition.

Also I wouldn't link the songs directly to the mac partition anyway because just incase windows decides to screw up ... (sorry -- I'm a recent mac convert after facing and fixing countless Windows problems ... not to mention its always fun learning something new )

[mhpoodle]

so my sansa connects just fine, but then it wont show up on the desktop ...does anyone know what i'm suppose to do? please and thanks

[andcheese]

If it doesn't "show up on the Desktop"; it's not really connected. You're probably running one of the 1.02.xx firmwares.

For reliable connecting to macs, you need to revert to 1.01.xx versions of firmware.

Do a search of the the Firmware sub-forum...

bburge

[Hubaaaa]

I can confirm this. I downloaded 1.01.11E and it works perfect (http://www.anythingbutipod.com/forum...ad.php?t=2338). But beware: This is the european firmware which does not support the radio feature of the sansa. You probably want to use the american firmware (look here: http://files.vaya.ws/sansafw/e200_FW...e_1.01.11a.zip).

To install the firmware use a windows PC with sansa player in MSC mode and just drag and drop the two files contained in the ZIP-File onto your sansa. If you don't own a windows PC (like me *g*) you can try using Virtual PC running Windows XP. It's quite strange, but Windows XP emulated by Virtual PC recognised my Sansa in recovery mode so I was able to install the 1.01.11 firmware. But I recommend using windows for this task. It's easier. After installing the right firmware you don't have to use Windows again (thank god).

The 1.01.11 firmware has all important features (like improved volume controll and custom equalizer) and works pretty well with Mac OS.

Greetings from good ol' germany from a quite happy new sansa user

[kwsmithaudio]

This thread has been going since June but nobody's asked why Sandisk (and Rhapsody too) don't have this stuff working perfectly on a Mac? It isn't that difficult so they're just losing money. iPod's and iTunes works on PC's without any of the hoop jumping you all are discussing, which sound like the stuff PC users used to do 15+ years ago just to get something working.

Most of the people I know and work with all use Mac's and are amazed what I'm able to do with the Sanasa and Rhapsody. The machine, integration and software is very competitive, and the Rhapsody content and model is vastly more useful to them than iTunes, especially for Classical and Jazz fans.

The consensus is that the E200r Rhapsody combo is more capable and ultimately a lot less expensive and compelling than the iPod and iTunes solution. And they all want is it to work as well on their Mac's just like most everything else does. These are all pro music and other creative and entertainment business professionals, not laymen, btw, so it's all about content and ease of use to them.

If the player and Rhapsody worked as well on a Mac it wouldn't just sell better, it would encourage the content creators and license owners to provide more of the music etc. we all want to hear.

Why both companies virtually ignore OSX is just dumb, it seems like they treat it as some kind of contest. It isn't.

[arch85]

Hey again guys!

I just spent ANOTHER countless set of hours to write a program so you can sync your Sansa with iTunes on a PC.

So now you can sync on both mac as well as a PC.

I will be releasing a version 2 of scripts for macs shortly -- there is a tiny flaw in the first version in the sense that suppose you rip a bunch of CDs into iTunes, it'll name them Track 1, Track 2, etc. Now if you add them to playlists and sync them using my scripts, instead of having 3 Track 3s (from different CDs) you will only have on Track 3 because they will all keep over-writing themselves.

I have already fixed this flaw in the PC version of the program -- if it encounters a duplicate, it will append a random number (not really random but you don't need to know the details ) in front of the file name so you will still have all your songs.

Now the only flaw that remains which I do not have the time or energy to fix right now is that if you have the same song as part of multiple playlists being imported, then it will be copied over multiple times; I will try to figure out a solution to that later.

But for now, hope you all enjoy the scripts!

http://www.ridesforall.com/archit/sa...nes/index.html

PLEASE NOTE: mp3s only .... won't work for aacs or m4as and all that jazz.

[dippy17888]

here are my ways of uing sansa on mac.
1. to put a song on sansa w/o hidden files, drag the song from itunes into the sansa while holdong apple+m+v.
2 to make playlists, create ur playlist as a go list, then copy the go list to the desktop. remame the copy to "playlistname.pla" then drag it back into playlists.

[andcheese]

For issue #1, hidden files, there are also some shell scripts; but I'm lazy and just unmount my Sansa with a utility called FinderCleaner. Google it, it's free...

bburge

[arch85]

Hi,

yeah you can put the songs in the player manually and add them to the golist but that'll only give you one playlist ... with the script that I wrote, you're still syncing it on a mac and you can have all your songs as well as multiple playlists.

You can select multiple play-lists to sync with just in case some of you were wondering ... (the apple key + click)

Thanks,

Archit

[dippy17888]

ur script doesnt work

[arch85]

you really need to be more descriptive for me to be able to help you -- what did you do and what was the error message?

So far about 170 mac users are using the mac script and about 120 PC users are using the PC script and its working spiffy for them; so maybe its some configuration issue at your end?

The PC script takes a LOOONNGG time to finish because of the stupid loops -- I'll work on that later on; a little busy with school at the moment.

[Zwack]

I'm not a mac user, but...

Several people have been asking about putting Photos on their Sansa...

I've got it almost completed from the Linux side and it might work well enough for Mac...

So, do you have Python installed on your Macs? and some software which can produce a windows bmp file?

I'm using the gimp and it produces 24bpp BMP files. The Sansa only uses 16BPP bmp files (5-6-5 at that). So, I have a python converter script that is almost there. I'll hopefully finish it off this week.

If you can create a 16 bpp 5 bits of red, 6 bits of green, 5 bits of blue windows bmp file then you're set.

There is one small gotcha that I discovered. You have to create sub-folders under PHOTOS and put the pictures in those sub-folders. If you just put them in PHOTOS then your Sansa won't see them.

I hope that this helps,

Z.

[dippy17888]

i use mac os x 10.28 and i put the script in the script folder like it says to, but, no script icon shows up in itunes.

[Jinkx]

Why in all things holy would anyone ever consider using a mac, it's like a bike with the training wheels welded on..... but hey thats just IMO

[andcheese]

Originally Posted by Jinkx

Why in all things holy would anyone ever consider using a mac, it's like a bike with the training wheels welded on..... but hey thats just IMO

Opinions are like iPods - everyone has one - but that doesn't make it right.

If you don't get it - don't get one. There are many reasons to use Windows and many reasons to use a Mac. I use both. This is coming to you from a Mac (OS X 10.4.8). I need to use a Windows system, at times, to communicate with lower system forms; usually ones that require some Windows only management client.

I use a Mac, not because I need training wheels, but because I want to be able to take them off when I want to. I'm a unix user. Having BSD unix "under the covers" lets me use a friendly GUI when I want one and drop to full unix when I need to.

Hang out with some technorati and you'll see more and more Macs showing up. I was at the most recent IETF, and Macs made up more than half of the systems of the speakers and almost all those working in the NOC (I was one of them).

bburge
Networking professional since 1989...

[xhozt]

Originally Posted by Jinkx

Why in all things holy would anyone ever consider using a mac, it's like a bike with the training wheels welded on..... but hey thats just IMO

your freeking kidding right ... Its more like a regular bike you can strap a JATO rocket to if you know what your doing . Me the only problems i got with macs is the fool that came up with the idea to move to intel chips ..
The bad ass thing about macs today is you can get into darwin and change what ever you want even more so than on a windows system ..

[Jinkx]

Riiiigghhhhttt.... whatever you say rocket boy

If mac's where so great why do 99.9% of fortune 500 companys use PC's? Oh I know, b/c they suck and there is hardly any software that actually works on them. Games, whats that? LOL!!!

Networking Professional since 1996......

[xhozt]

Originally Posted by Jinkx

Riiiigghhhhttt.... whatever you say rocket boy

If mac's where so great why do 99.9% of fortune 500 companys use PC's? Oh I know, b/c they suck and there is hardly any software that actually works on them. Games, whats that? LOL!!!

Networking Professional since 1996......

Well for one what do you mean by PC's Personal computers can mean mac win linux bsd ,,,,,,,,,,. .. and i could give a damn less of a care what fortune 500 companys use {btw back up your 99.9% using windows its int the 90's but not that high} . Also If you have not noticed still most servers out there are Unix/bsd based.
Not that im a Mac fanboy I dont even own one I am a mac tech at work and have a test lab with 7 macs 4 windows and 3 linux boxes for hard testing of many issues for the same companys you are talking about . 1/4 the time windows is ok for a solution but ,, the rest linux or mac , And the recomendations are followed trust me ,.

[andcheese]

I use all of the above.

Even my home network has two Macs, two OpenBSD, one linux, two Solaris and a handful of Windows - I know what tool to bring to the job - based on the job - not the tool. It's sad when some people only have one solution at their disposal.

I've never been able to figure why Windows people want to come to places like this (a Mac/linux forum) to debate OS's when the topic is actually something else (like Sansa's). I thought to myself - we only have this one forum for our issues and it has little or nothing to do with them.

Then it hit me... We don't have just this one - we use them all. As "solo OSer's" they actually have one LESS forum to play in than we do - so they come over here to nyah-nyah our OS of choice.

Well, it's all in good fun! Should we start a new thread? This one's getting pretty much thrashed...

bburge

[xhozt]

nah not really I just have a soft spot for macs/and anything running a non guI os TOO .