The Rockbox Sansa c200 port

Install

Simulator

Troubleshooting

Sansapatcher isn't finding my c200 even though it's a v1

Sansapatcher doesn't recognize units running v01.01.07 of the Sansa firmware. Roll the OF back as described in the following No MSC Mode section and it should find it.

No MSC Mode

If you can't find the option to switch USB mode to MSC in order to install Rockbox, you have two options:

1. Try rolling back the Sansa firmware to an older version. Download version 1.01.00 from here (choose the letter version that matches your existing firmware). The files are compressed in .7z format; you can download 7-Zip to open them. Now enter Recovery Mode and upgrade the firmware. (Info gathered from here)
2. With the device off, engage the hold switch, press and hold the rewind button, plug the device in your computer. If done correctly, the Sansa will be recognized as an MSC device.

USB Connection Problems with SD cards

If you have a microSD card in your player you must either remove the card on USB plug-in (you can insert it after connecting and to write data to the card as long as it's not a SDHC card) or boot the original firmware manually first and then connect to USB.

Recovery Mode

Recovery mode can be used to replace a .mi4 image on the player. If you by some reason can't boot into the original firmware, like if you messed up the installation or similar, or you simply want to change the firmware to a different version, recovery mode can be your friend. To get there:

• Power off
• Turn ON lock/hold
• Hold REC button and press MENU button (used to turn the player on/off)
• Plug the player to the computer
• In My Computer you can see new drive 16MB-FORMAT

To update the firmware, copy the unzipped files into the 16mb drive, unplug the player, and release the hold switch.

A word of caution

• Only copy these specific files to the recovery partition.
• Do not format this 16MB drive
• Do not try anything else unless you have to. Again: You might brick your player!

Diagnosis Mode

To get into Diag mode (not the same as recovery mode):

• Power off
• Turn ON lock/hold
• Hold down DOWN BUTTON
• Insert USB cable or press menu/on while holding down button.

The e200tool can be used to unbrick a c200 as long as the diag mode works.

Hardware Details

• The good people at anythingbutipod.com took one apart and wrote an article about it (with lots of photos). It can be found here.
• We can easily detect the AS3514.
• The microcontroller/CPU has to be upper left chip on this image, and it is most likely the same PP model found in the iPod Nano (PP5021C) as seen on this nano PCB scan.
  
• Rockbox identifies the PP chip as a PP5022C
• There are 1GB and 2GB versions of this flash player.
• The display is a 132x80 colour LCD, controlled by a Samsung S6B33B2 (datasheet)

Firmware Details

This player is clearly PortalPlayer based and uses mi4 files for upgrading. The mi4code tool on the mi4 site is updated to decrypt these mi4 files out-of-the-box.

Other Pages Of Interest

• SansaRuntime - Modeled after the successful IpodRuntime page, this is a collection of reported runtime tests.
• SansaFAQ - Frequently Asked Questions about the Sansa e200 port. Many points apply to the c200 as well.