Patrick’s Rants

I “broke” my step daughter’s mp3 player the Sansa e250 and after some searching around on the web I had to contact tech support at Sandisk. I found that I was apparently unable to list more than one e250 device in my list of hardware. It might be possible, but I wasn’t able to simply add a second device to my list of owned devices. Both of the older girls have one, both purchased at the same time.

Here’s my message to support:

This player is completely bricked. The screen is black on the wheel shows blue, nothing else comes up. I tried to do a firmware update, but due to lack of instructions for my Linux based system I had to guess at the proper files to copy. We have two of these players and were considering purchasing additional ones for my wife and I, but are not sure that they will be suitable considering the lack of documentation and the forced Windows environment. We do like the fact that we can use plain mp3s when everything is working correctly, but again the lack of instructions and documentation for non-Windows XP users is a serious drawback.

The response seems a little canned:

Hello,

Thank you for contacting SanDisk Technical Support.
It sounds like your firmware may have become corrupted.
To fix this we will need to put your device into a recovery mode and update your firmware to do so follow these steps.
1. Turn the player off by holding down the menu key for a full sixty to one hundred twenty seconds.
2. On the top of the player is a Hold switch, move it to the right (toward the headphone jack) so you see Orange.
3. On the left hand side of the player is a Record button, press and hold it while pressing the menu key to power on the player.
4.The player should now say please connect usb cable to p.c. .
5.Go to the following link and download the sansa firmware updater.
http://www.sandisk.com/Retail/Default.aspx?CatID=1376
6. When the download completes start the installation process.
7. At the end of installation process the updater should ask you to connect the player and click finish.
8.Now connect player to computer it should say usb cable connected.And click finish.
9.Disconnect your player and allow the database to refresh.

Your player should now function as normal

And now for something completely different:

I have placed the device in recovery mode.
The firmware updater does not run on Linux
At this point I get a black screen, no recovery mode console.
The device is not visible from any of my computers.

Not only does the updater not work on Linux based systems, it doesn’t work on anything older than Windows 2000 or XP - neither exists in this house so my upgrade wasn’t going to work even if I could get it to the point where it would take the update. Sandisk replaced the mp3 player and we ended up buying two more.

1. They still do not have Linux based tools for the e250 (they do for other Sandisk mp3 players - or at least they advertise Linux support on other devices)
2. Overall I’m happy with our mp3 players, but I do have a few interesting behaviors that I’m not sure if I can blame on the players or if it’s something in Amarok.
• Some songs don’t get properly categorized by artist and album instead ending up in a general “Unknown” listing
• On my step daughter’s e250 some songs don’t even seem to show up at all even though they are definitely on the device. She’s on a lower software version than mine and my wife’s though, wonder if that’s what it is