SanDisk Sansa AMS Port Page

Models
Port Status
Installation for Stable (e200v2, Fuze v1) and Unstable (Clip v1)
Installation for Unusable (other AMS Sansas)
Uninstallation
Unbricking
Formatting a Player that cannot get past the Database Refresh in the OF
Other pages of interest

Models

The term "Sansa AMS" is applied to all Sansas with the AMS AS3525 SoC: namely the Fuze, Clip, e200 v2, c200 v2, and m200 v4 (m200 with firmware v04.xx.xx). "Samsa" is a pet name sometimes applied to the AMS Sansas

It can also be applied to newer hardware revisions of Fuze and Clip, named Fuzev2 and Clipv2 with a newer AMS SoC believed to be the AS3531.

AS3525 datasheet

ARM922T datasheet

Port Status

Rockbox is considered Stable (Fuze v1/e200v2), Unstable (Clipv1) or Unusable (all others) on AMS Sansas. The bootloader does run, and most drivers are working well however (currently only USB is missing).

See TargetStatus#New_Platforms_Currently_Under_Development

The forum thread for this port is http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php?topic=14064.0.

Current Status

Target	USB	Battery Charging/Monitoring	Dual Boot OF	Playback	FM-Radio	Recording	Display	Internal/External Storage	Buttons	Plugins	Simulator	General Problems
m200v4	No*	needs a battery bench for calibration	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes / N/A	Yes	Yes	Yes	sporadic (volume related) shutdowns, Playback crashes
Clip	No*	Yes/Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes / N/A	Yes	Yes	Yes
c200v2	No*	Yes/Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	Yes (sometimes shuts down)	Yes / Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
e200v2	No*	Yes/Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes / Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Fuze v1	No*	Yes/Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes / Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
FuzeV2	No	No/No	Yes	No	No	No	No	No / No	No	No	No	No code in SVN : see http://github.com/ecrips/Rockbox-FuzeV2
ClipV2	No	No/No	Yes	No	No	No	Yes	No / N/A	Yes	Yes	Yes	The V2 clip contains significant hardware changes. The CPU model is a arm926ej-s unlike Clipv1.
Clip +	No	No/No	Yes	No	No	No	No	No / No	No	No	No	Believed to use the same SOC as the Clip v2. Dualboot is implemented with the left button or the home button until USB pin is determined.

* Until the USB driver is fully operational, file transfer support is provided by booting the Original Firmware when the USB cable is inserted.

Development hardware is available for the Clip v2 to interested developers. Inquire in the forums or on IRC and someone will contact you.

Status details/Issues:

USB: Some work has been done on USB, but we have nearly no documentation. However, the register addresses for the USB controller in the AS3525 datasheet match the ones in the linux driver for the AMD 5536 UDC (amd5536udc.c and amd5536udc.h) A data sheet for the 5536 SOC is available here with USB description. You can also look at the (working) code for Ipod Nano2G which looks similar. There is a linux driver on denx repository for "Synopsys HS OTG" written by Synopsys. The order of some registers mismatch but this can help anyway.
Clip/c200v2/m200v4: Playback & recording crashes (infrequent on Clip, frequent on others), recording is completely disabled. See FS#10605
Battery: battery life is shorter than when using the OF, see SansaRuntime

Port status as of January 07 2010.

Installation for Stable (e200v2, Fuze v1) and Unstable (Clip v1)

Disclaimer:

Rockbox is considered unusable on AMS and is unsupported on everything but the Fuze v1, e200v2 and Clip v1.
Even though the bootloader installation and rockbox itself are tested, there's always a risk of BRICKING your device PERMANENTLY. The Sansa AMS (except the e200v2, for which it involves opening the player) have no known method for recovery, so this risk will not go away, even in (if any) future stable releases.
There's no known recovery method for the AMS Sansas, except for the e200v2 (see below).
Installation of a bootloader may or may not permanently disable DRM support, even if you uninstall it (this is an early and old problem, but there are reports that this may not be the case anymore).

Installation:

Automatic installation (Fuze v1 and e200v2 only) with RockboxUtility is possible, recommended and far easier.

Manual installation

Files to download:

e200v2

A original firmware (OF): http://forums.sandisk.com...=e200&thread.id=13548
The bootloader: http://download.rockbox.o...2/bootloader-e200v2.sansa
mkamsboot: http://download.rockbox.o...sk-sansa/mkamsboot/
The normal Rockbox build: http://build.rockbox.org/...a/rockbox-sansae200v2.zip

Fuze v1

A original firmware (OF): http://forums.sandisk.com...afuse&thread.id=23276
The bootloader: http://download.rockbox.o...uze/bootloader-fuze.sansa
mkamsboot: http://download.rockbox.o...sk-sansa/mkamsboot/
The normal Rockbox build: http://build.rockbox.org/data/rockbox-sansafuze.zip

Clip v1

A original firmware (OF): http://forums.sandisk.com/sansa/board/message?board.id=clip&thread.id=15109
The bootloader: http://download.rockbox.o.../bootloader-clip.sansa
mkamsboot: http://download.rockbox.o...sk-sansa/mkamsboot/
The normal Rockbox build: http://build.rockbox.org/...a/rockbox-sansaclip.zip

Linux & Mac OSX

Make sure your player is in MSC mode.
Download and Extract the normal build (rockbox.zip) onto your device.
Create a folder 'rbinstall' in your home directory (e.g. 'mkdir ~/rbinstall' from a terminal window)
Download and Extract the OF, the bootloader AND mkamsboot into that folder.
Open a new terminal window. CD to the 'rbinstall' folder ('cd ~/rbinstall')
Run mkamsboot from the terminal window you opened in the previous step, passing the name of the OF file you've downloaded and the the bootloader file you've downloaded, as well as a name you can chose yourself for the patched output file
(e.g. './mkamsboot fuzea.bin bootloader-fuze.bin patched.bin')
Retry or abort if it does not report success!
Copy the output file to the root of your device and rename it to whatever the OF file you've downloaded was named
Safely unmount and wait for the firmware update to finish.
You've successfully installed the bootloader and Rockbox. It boots by default. For booting the OF press |<< very quickly or plug the cable in while the device off.

Windows

Make sure your player is in MSC mode.
Download and Extract the normal build (rockbox.zip) onto your device.
Create a folder 'rbinstall' in your on the Desktop
Extract the OF, the bootloader AND mkamsboot into that folder.
Open a new command promt window (Windowskey+R->cmd.exe). CD to the 'rbinstall' folder ('cd Desktop\rbinstall')
Run mkamsboot from the command line window you opened in the previous step, passing the name of the OF file you've downloaded and the the bootloader file you've downloaded, as well as a name you can chose yourself for the patched output file
(e.g. 'mkamsboot.exe fuzea.bin bootloader-fuze.bin patched.bin')
Retry or abort if it does not report success!
Copy the output file to the root of your device and rename it to whatever the OF file you've downloaded was named
Safely reject, unplug USB and wait for the firmware update to finish.
You've successfully installed the bootloader and Rockbox. It boots by default. For booting the OF press |<< very quickly or plug the cable in while it's off.

Installation for Unusable (other AMS Sansas)

Disclaimer:

Rockbox is considered unusable on AMS and is unsupported on everything but the Fuze v1, e200 v2 and Clip v1.
Unless you know what you're doing AND interested in getting the port forward by contributing to the project, please reconsider installing the bootloader again, and once more.
Even though the bootloader installation and rockbox itself are tested, there's always a risk of BRICKING your device PERMANENTLY. The Sansa AMS (except the e200v2, for which it involves opening the player) have no known method for recovery, so this risk will not go away, even in (if any) future stable releases.
There's no known recovery method for the AMS Sansas, except for the e200v2 (see below).
Installation of a bootloader may or may not permanently disable DRM support, even if you uninstall it (this is an early and old problem, but there are reports that this may not be the case anymore).

Installation:

See HowToCompile to build a bootloader (stop after step "5. Build") choosing B for bootloader when prompted, or download one here: http://download.rockbox.org/bootloader/sandisk-sansa/
Get an original firmware for your model (see http://forums.sandisk.com/sansa/?category.id=devices or http://daniel.haxx.se/sansa/amsfw.html)
Get mkamsboot: http://download.rockbox.o...sk-sansa/mkamsboot/
Usage (example for clip): ./mkamsboot m300a.bin bootloader-clip.sansa output.bin
Copy the output file to the root of your player and rename it like the original firmware (m300a.bin) in this example.
Eject, and unplug the USB cable : firmware upgrade will begin.
See HowToCompile to build and install a rockbox build, or use current build for your target: m200v4, c200v2

Uninstallation

Just update your player with an unmodified original firmware and delete the .rockbox folder.

Unbricking

It's possible to brick an AMS Sansa by running faulty code.

e200v2's can be put in a recovery mode by shorting a couple of pins on the PCB, see the SansaE200v2 page for details, or see http://www.anythingbutipod.com/forum/showpost.php?p=281975&postcount=3

Other AMS Sansas can also get into this mode, but can not be unbricked this way (they present an USB disk of size 0 that cannot be written).

Formatting a Player that cannot get past the Database Refresh in the OF

If you damage the filesystem on the internal SD you can find yourself in a situation where the database refresh in the OF hangs up and you will be unable to boot into the OF and also unable to connect via usb to correct the problem. If you find yourself in this situation you can bypass the OF database refresh by connecting your player via usb and disconnecting it just after the Sandisk logo appears on the screen. This will bring you into the normal top menu in the OF and you can then format your player through the settings menu.

Other pages of interest

SansaAMSHardwareMappings - shows functions of GPIO pins for various SansaAMS players
SansaAMSFirmware - an analysis of the sandisk firmware structure (historical)