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how to brick a sansa m240

L

linuxlove

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Auburn, AL
1. set it up to use with Basilisk II
2. open the player with basilisk II and play some music
3. remove the device from the host
4. You're done bricking your sansa!

So yeah, i bricked mine and it's stuck in a loop. IT just shows SANDISK Initializing and Sansa m240 1.0GB and keeps looping and ill not work. So, i need a new MP3 player. Any ides? Note that I don't have enough money for an iPod.

Any help on fixing this or advice to look for a new MP3 player would me greatly appreciated!
 
I have a few of those generic ones made by a company called Innovage. They're small and flash based but they get the job done cheaply. Should be easy to find if you're looking for something low key and affordable. These are usually rebranded so you can't always go off the makers name although they do brand they're own stuff sometimes.
 
linuxlove said:
1. set it up to use with Basilisk II
2. open the player with basilisk II and play some music
3. remove the device from the host
4. You're done bricking your sansa!

So yeah, i bricked mine and it's stuck in a loop. IT just shows SANDISK Initializing and Sansa m240 1.0GB and keeps looping and ill not work. So, i need a new MP3 player. Any ides? Note that I don't have enough money for an iPod.

Any help on fixing this or advice to look for a new MP3 player would me greatly appreciated!
Click to expand...

Can you open the unit and remove the battery? Let it sit overnight and it should reset with any luck.

Thanks and have a nice day!

Andrew Lynch
 
lynchaj said:
Can you open the unit and remove the battery? Let it sit overnight and it should reset with any luck.

Thanks and have a nice day!

Andrew Lynch
Click to expand...

i've let it sit for two days without a battery and no reset has happened... yet.
The odd thing is, unless System 7.5.5 wiped all the files except for the music, it should still work, because all it did (i assume) was create a folder named .finf
 
Well, I opened it up to look for anything that might reset the player. And I found a little button-cell battery. Could this be a backup battery, like the ones in computers to keep them from losing their CMOS info?
 
Unplug it for a while and find out! The thing's already not working, so you might as well mess with it :D
 
well, I tried everything i found and it's still bricked :/ However, i got a new player, a Sansa Clip. As far as the button-cell battery on the m240, it's soldered in there so it's not coming out.I might mess with it later, but for now i think i'll leave it in there.
 
Sansa has a support forum - why not check there? You can't be the first and only person with this problem.
 
IT WORKS AGAIN! :D :D :D

Anyway, I decided to take some risks with it, since it didn't work right anymore why not?

So what I did was, this: On the internal PCB, there's two big chips, which is the flash memory. They look like this:

v 512MB flash mem. (chip #2)
=========
| <-- Connecter to the main PCB
|
=========
^ main PCB with 512MB flash mem. (chip #1)

What I did was pop a battery in, turn it on and then remove chip #2 while the player was on. I did this a few times, then when I snapped it back in firmly and restarted the player, it came up just fine! The only downside to this fix may have been that I've shortened the life of the player, but who cares? it works!

So, now I have two sansa players.
 
yeah, but it makes it easier to troubleshoot the player :p

what's also interesting is that the NAND transistor on this player is clearly identified.
 
Here is my Fix

Here is my Fix

By using some of the idea's above I think I have the fix. I removed my internal battery but that was probably not needed.

1. Remove battery
2. Open Device (one screw by battery case, the rest pops out with a pry)
3. Plug via USB into computer (should say initializing and computer does not recognize it)
4. Pull memory out of socket at the opposite side of the USB cable (be careful).
5. When the memory is pulled the device should be recognized
6. Plug memory back in.
7. format device (LCD should say format for at least a second)
8. When I did it, the format never completed so after a few minutes cancel the format.
9. Remove the USB wait a second and then plug right back in and should be detected like normal.
10. Now format again and you should be good to go.

I broke mine with Rythembox my guess is by either removing it to soon or copying too much data on the disk. I was trying lots of things but I am pretty sure thats the process. If I break it again I will test and make sure that was it. I think the basic idea is trying to get the device alive long enough to remove the data off the detachable memory.
 
lolz, we're both from /dev/null :D

Yeah, i just unplugged the flash chips while it was on and it worked again. Even all my media stayed intact :D
 
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