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Topic: a real death for the Fuze+ (Read 4785 times) previous topic - next topic
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a real death for the Fuze+

This is about a Sansa Fuze+ failure. Has anyone experienced the following symptoms and found a recovery?

The device is totally unresponsive to the power switch, pressed down for either for the usual 2 seconds or held down for 20+ seconds. This could be a dead battery or something more serious.

If plugged onto a wall wart power source, it displays about 10 or 12 lines.
Boot version 1.0
a couple of alphanumeric codes
USB: connected
USB: timed out
Loading ...something
more lines

This all happens at speed. After the timed out message, line 5, the lines are put out, then cleared, too quickly for me to read anything, then the entire sequence repeats, for as long as the Fuze+ is attached to power.

If plugged into a computer USB port, the first three lines are the same. I'm not certain if the alphameric codes are identical, as they are not on screen very long under the other connection. The forth line is
Bootloader USB mode

The above is stable as long as it is attached to the computer. The file structure, and contents, can be viewed in Windows Explorer. It is essentially just a USB flash drive. There is also a memory card but, unlike during normal operations, the memory card does not show up in Windows Exploder as a second disk (or at all). Removing the card makes no difference in anything that happens or is seen.

I had an iPod mini that, on three separate occasions, would not work when the battery died. I don't recall if there was any, however limited, response on its screen when attached to a wall wart power supply, but the disk drive did not spin up and display in Windows Explorer when attached to a computer. Each time, putting in a new battery returned operations to normal.

Of course I don't know that a bad battery is the cause of the problem here, but replacing it could be a worthwhile experiment. Unfortunately, neither replacement batteries nor maintenance instructions seem to be available for the Fuze+. I figure that there are batteries that will work, if perhaps not the exact original size, but I'm not sure that I can take the thing apart without damaging something seriously --  the case, maybe more. Then there is the question of how successfully it can be put back together.

Anyway, anyone know anything?

a real death for the Fuze+

Reply #1 –
Quote from: AndyH-ha on
This is about a Sansa Fuze+ failure. Has anyone experienced the following symptoms and found a recovery?

The device is totally unresponsive to the power switch, pressed down for either for the usual 2 seconds or held down for 20+ seconds. This could be a dead battery or something more serious.

If plugged onto a wall wart power source, it displays about 10 or 12 lines.
Boot version 1.0
a couple of alphanumeric codes
USB: connected
USB: timed out
Loading ...something
more lines

This all happens at speed. After the timed out message, line 5, the lines are put out, then cleared, too quickly for me to read anything, then the entire sequence repeats, for as long as the Fuze+ is attached to power.

If plugged into a computer USB port, the first three lines are the same. I'm not certain if the alphameric codes are identical, as they are not on screen very long under the other connection. The forth line is
Bootloader USB mode

The above is stable as long as it is attached to the computer. The file structure, and contents, can be viewed in Windows Explorer. It is essentially just a USB flash drive. There is also a memory card but, unlike during normal operations, the memory card does not show up in Windows Exploder as a second disk (or at all). Removing the card makes no difference in anything that happens or is seen.

I had an iPod mini that, on three separate occasions, would not work when the battery died. I don't recall if there was any, however limited, response on its screen when attached to a wall wart power supply, but the disk drive did not spin up and display in Windows Explorer when attached to a computer. Each time, putting in a new battery returned operations to normal.

Of course I don't know that a bad battery is the cause of the problem here, but replacing it could be a worthwhile experiment. Unfortunately, neither replacement batteries nor maintenance instructions seem to be available for the Fuze+. I figure that there are batteries that will work, if perhaps not the exact original size, but I'm not sure that I can take the thing apart without damaging something seriously --  the case, maybe more. Then there is the question of how successfully it can be put back together.

Anyway, anyone know anything?


They are very inexpensive to just order a new one and replace it. Sounds like moving your music library to the new device will be a slam dunk. Nothing is forever.

a real death for the Fuze+

Reply #2 –
You could try reflashing the firmware, maybe something got it corrupted. The fact it's showing "bootloader USB mode" instead of the normal firmware screen, could be a hint to that. You can get the firmware from sandisk's site.

a real death for the Fuze+

Reply #3 –
inexpensive is completely, totally, relative, and besides, it is not relevant if one is interested in doing something else.

Since it cannot be turned on, is it possible to change the firmware?

a real death for the Fuze+

Reply #4 –
look at method 2 on this page for updating the firmware.

http://kb.sandisk.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5317

edit: i should say that if it powers off immediately after disconnecting from your computer, this isn't going to work.

a real death for the Fuze+

Reply #5 –
First there is the matter of insuring the battery is at least 50% charged. Maybe 20% charge, or less, is actually good enough, but the point is that if the processes is interrupted before it is finished (e.g. if the batter runs down before the update is complete), recovery is not possible. The device is dead  without factory assistance, or so I read someplace when I did the original firmware update to the new player. It is not possible to check the battery status because the player will not run, possibly because the battery is dead.

Second is that the player will not run. Therefore it seems certain that putting the new firmware object (firmware.sb) into the root directory of the Fuze+  can  not accomplish anything. The player has to be able to run in order to do the update. It starts to load its OS and finds the new object and thus diverts to update rather than simple boot. The update might be able to replace corrupted firmware, if only it could get going, but it can't.
 

a real death for the Fuze+

Reply #6 –
If it wasn't clear from my first post, it does not run even when connected to a power source.

a real death for the Fuze+

Reply #8 –
The player uses Rockbox. Some of the comments here let to me consider the Sansa OS. I already knew that trying to boot into it, instead of Rockbox, was no more successful, but I finally thought of plugging it into a power supply while holding down the lower volume button (the means of selecting the Sansa system), instead of just pressing both that and the power-on button simultaneously. This produced a new result.

The Sansa flash screens appeared, then the full screen low battery icon showed, with 'charging' displayed under it. After a short time it spontaneously rebooted, going into the endlessly recycling Rockbox boot-up, but this time it got to the color Rockbox logo before starting over.

A couple more times of starting up by depressing the boot-to-Sansa key, while attaching it to a power  supply, apparently resulted in enough of a battery charge to make it stable in the Sansa OS charging mode. I left it charging for perhaps an hour and a half and things seemed more or less normal. The Rockbox status bar said 90% charge and the system seemed to operate normally. This suggests that a dead battery, and not corrupted software, was at the heart of the problem.

I turned it off for two hours, to see if the battery was stable or rapidly leaking. When I turned it on, the status said 84% charge. It stayed at 84% over the next 8 hours. I turned it on to check the charge every two or three hours, and played a few seconds of music each time.

When next I tried it, about 13 hours later, the displayed charge was down to 82%. About 8 hours later the charge was down another few percent. I selected some music and let it play for about two hours. It now reads 69% charge.

I don't know how close to normal this is. Perhaps the battery isn't holding up as well as it should, but it definitely seems useable. Maybe this behavior is to be expected if the battery is run down all the way. I would not be surprised if my friend who owns it ran the battery to a low charge state, then ignored the player for a few weeks, and it drained to zip.

I found a battery on ebay, for about $25, that explicitly claims to be for the Fuze+ but it doesn't look to come with any instructions. Everywhere I look says the battery cannot be replaced -- period, end of discussion. This can't be true literally but maybe it is next to impossible to open the thing without destroying it. This one was sold as factory refurbished, so it seems probable (and reasonable) that Sansa has some means of working on the internals, but I'm not eager to try it without some diagrams and insights.

a real death for the Fuze+

Reply #9 –
Man! Given that the DAP itself was going for 30 bucks last March on ebay, it really sucks big time they're asking that much for the (supposedly spare) battery.

As simplistic as it may sound, if you decide to take the plunge and buy it, something that has worked for me before on ebay (and other HA members have probably already tried it) was:
when buying a whole new, uncertain product, to ask whoever bought it recently - via messaging - whether they were happy with their purchase & the seller or not and if it did what it promised on the tin and so on.

Apart from a few users who might just ignore you, you always get a reply or two out of every 3 or 4 messages you send - and I assure you they tell you much more than the skimpy feedback might let through. But these are just my two cents in case you decide the battery is the real culprit, that is.
• Listen to the music, not the media it's on
• The older, the 'lossier'

a real death for the Fuze+

Reply #10 –
At least for the Fuze (which I'm a proud owner) it does look like too much of a hassle though and you have to be really skillful with a soldering iron (which I am particularly not).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZ9x2NOG-Po


Edit: hang on a sec! If I'm not mistaken that's actually the Fuze+ itself!?
• Listen to the music, not the media it's on
• The older, the 'lossier'

a real death for the Fuze+

Reply #11 –
Wait, you use rockbox on it? You should have said that from the start!
The fuze+ port is an unstable one with a clear warning there have been reports of malfunctioning, as can be read here.

Revert to the official firmware for now.

a real death for the Fuze+

Reply #12 –
The Fuze+ port has evolved a lot and currently works very well. The trick when the battery is completely discharged, is to plug in the Fuze+ while holding the down volume key, in order to boot the Fuze+ into the Original Firmware, and let it charge a bit. After that, you can continue charging it with Rockbox. Note that version 2 of the Rockbox Fuze+ bootloader is now able to charge the Fuze+ without fully booting Rockbox.

a real death for the Fuze+

Reply #13 –
Rockbox 3.13 was installed last summer. Has anything Fuze+ relevant happened since then? How do I find out?

a real death for the Fuze+

Reply #14 –
The documentation approach seemed a bit confusing at first but I figured it out and have installed the latest development build on the player.

This model, with 4GB memory, sells new for around $80. Markedly less expensive offers are available from a few sites. New players come with a one year Sansa warranty. This "factory refurbished", about $25 on Amazon, came with a 45 day seller's warranty. Others I've looked at have no mention of warranty. I suspect they are rejects or something that fell off the back of a truck.

a real death for the Fuze+

Reply #16 –
Quote from: AndyH-ha on
Rockbox 3.13 was installed last summer. Has anything Fuze+ relevant happened since then? How do I find out?


3.13 does not run on the Fuze+, so you're probably running something a good bit newer than that if you installed over the summer. 

FWIW, I see that the bootloader was recently updated to fix issues with low battery and crashing on startup.  You might want to update if you're still running an older one.  I don't have a Fuze+ though, so I'm not too familiar with it's code.

a real death for the Fuze+

Reply #17 –
Off the top of my head: battery life has been increased, the new bootloader can charge the device, a touchpad sensitivity setting has been introduced, and the touchpad gets disabled when the player is locked (power button during playback).