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Rockbox Rocks

[2007-12-05]

I was lucky enough to nab a refurb Sansa c240 off Woot not to long ago. Why another M3P player, Bob? you ask. Because this particular M3P player will run Rockbox, the open source firmware which supports all manor of cool things, including:

• Full support for more audio formats than there are people.
• MPEG2 video support, so you can view your porn collection at postage-stamp sizes!
• It plays fricken Doom!
• Apparently you can program it to talk to you with pre-generated phrases. I find that both awesome and creepy!
• Your geek factor will triple once you get it working, which is good, but mostly bad.

It took a long-ass time to figure out how to get it installed, primarily because the idiots at SanDisk felt it was time to remove support for MSC USB mode, which is nerd language for saying that it doesn't show up as removable disk, but rather as some idiotic "media device" which has half the functionality and requires Windows Media Player 10! Hooray!

Luckily, you can downgrade the Sansa firmware to an older version to get it to work. Need help doing the same? Grab the firmware here. Update: The link I had to the firmware is now defunct. You'll have to search the web. I used version 1.00.04A for my Sansa. Then follow these simple instructions:

1. Turn your player off. The Spice Girls can wait.
2. Set the hold button to hold.
3. Push and hold the record button.
4. While holding the record button, turn the power on by pressing the menu button. Now let go of both.
5. Now the player will say some crap. Ignore that. It speaks moon language and is just trying to trick you into joining its pyramid scheme.
6. Plug player into your window's machine's USB port. If you don't know what that is, give up now.
7. Magically, a new drive appears under My Computer. This is the third sign of the prophecy coming true, and is to be expected. Just don't say it's name three times. Ever.
8. Extract the downloaded firmware's zip file into the root of the new prophecy drive.
9. Pray to whichever god or gods you choose. Make it good this time.
10. Disconnect your player. It will automatically reboot with the new (old) firmware.
11. Congratulations! You're a nerd!

Got this far? Fantastic! Now follow the instructions on the Rockbox site to finish up. Enjoy the extra functions, the games, the demos, and most importantly, the Spice Girls.