So I “Hacked” My Crappy MP3 Player
Recently I purchased a refurbished (and cheap) MP3 player from my favorite gadget retailer TigerDirect.com; a Sansa e250V2 (or so the back of the unit itself says). The device itself only stores 2GB of data but comes with an expansion slot that can accept MicroSD flash memory cards, so I purchased an extra 4GB chip on the side.
Unfortunately, I have come to learn that when you get a refurb, it’s possible the manufacturer has replaced the case on the outside with one that has a slightly different model number. Long story short, I had found that this was actually an e200v1 (or perhaps an e250v1) and its firmware doesn’t support flash memory cards that are SDHC (e.g., anything over 2GB in size). Even if I had upgraded to the latest version of the firmware available for this player, it still wouldn’t have fixed the problem.
Now for the good news: While I was digging around for a fix, I came across an open-source software project called Rockbox. Rockbox is a replacement firmware that will run on several types of MP3 players, and one of the features I was hoping to gain by installing it was support for SDHC cards. What I got was a hell of a lot more than I expected.
For starts, this OS loads FAST. Not only that but it came with a bunch of extra applications, visual themes, and GAMES! Yeah baby! I couldn’t believe it when I loaded up a variant of id Software’s DOOM on my cheap $30 MP3 player. There’s no other way to say it but Rockbox is one really awesome piece of software and I’m really happy I found it! THANK YOU ROCKBOX!
October 27th, 2009 at 9:50 am
Haha, yeah, I have a Sansa e260v2 (non-refurb), that Rockbox sadly doesn’t support. I was going to put Rockbox on it after I got my iPod Touch, so I’m just kind of waiting until it’s supported. In any case, glad to know that it’s worth using (once it’s possible to use it
).