Sansa Fuze+ Firmware 02.38.06

I was banging my head against the wall with playlists.

PROBLEM:

Using Ubuntu with m3u files produced an empty playlist no matter what I did.

SOLUTION:

Booted into Windows, used WMP to create a playlist, I now know how to make playlists work.

OPINION:

Fuze+ is okay once you figure out how to use it. I think it’s confusing and clunky, but it works. For $40, there’s not much to complain about at this point. Looking forward to firmware updates or Rockbox to make it seamless with Linux. If you’re 100% Linux and you want playlists, you’re probably out-of-luck for now. If you beg to differ, please, tell me your secret.

Okay, so it’s reported that .pla files will work.

Hopefully this will eliminate the need to use WMP.

sudo apt-get install fapg

manpage
http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/intrepid/man1/fapg.1.html

example
Generate a playlist that will work on a Sansa e200 series  MP3  player:
       fapg -f pla -o /path/to/playlist.pla /path/to/all/music

Right now i have seen - that development of rockbox: http://www.rockbox.org/wiki/SansaFuzePlusPort has been improved a lot since the last time… hopefully they’ll setup a good firmware!!!

Had a 16gb Fuze + for two days. Loaded some music, podcasts, and a few videos. (MSC mode)

Updated to firmware 02.38.06. After the firmware update my podcast folder seems to have ended up with duplicates of all the podcasts that were on the Fuze+ before the update. Notice PODCASTS had changed to BOOKS after the firmware update, don’t know if this somehow caused the duplication.

Now I am concerned the file structure might be a bit wonky. Is a Format the best way to set things back to a more pristine state?

@dhartsoc wrote:

 

Now I am concerned the file structure might be a bit wonky. Is a Format the best way to set things back to a more pristine state?

Yep. Then you can re-load everything.

Reformatting AND also reloading the firmware believe it or not does NOT technicaly

restore your device to stock original states. I confirmed this by dumping the filesystem databases

before AND after firmware upgrade + reformat and reset settings

and using a comparison tool i could see TONS of references to content i had put on in the past…

And to the guy talking about the playlists earlier,

I coded a program that can do a bunch of things to the Fuze+

one of them is it can read what formats it supports

and i can see that the only format for playlist that returns “supported” (through the MTP api)

is .m3u playlists.

So,

WMDM_FORMATCODE_WPLPLAYLIST, “WPL Playlist” = NO
WMDM_FORMATCODE_M3UPLAYLIST, “M3U Playlist” = YES Supported
WMDM_FORMATCODE_MPLPLAYLIST, “MPL Playlist” = NO
WMDM_FORMATCODE_ASXPLAYLIST, “ASX Playlist” = NO
WMDM_FORMATCODE_PLSPLAYLIST, “PLS Playlist” = NO

WMDM_FORMATCODE_ABSTRACTAUDIOVIDEOPLAYLIST, “Abstract AudioVideo Playlist” YES Supported

@xpmule wrote:

Reformatting AND also reloading the firmware believe it or not does NOT technicaly

restore your device to stock original states.

It probably doesn’t overwrite all of the stuff on the firmware partition. I guess you might have to clear that from recovery mode using the imxtools, or just wait for the sandisk software to clear up its old database on its own.

I think I’ll take a wait and see approach. The Fuze+ is functioning properly. It just seems some confluence of the firmware update and re-indexing caused the podcast and video files to be duplicated, maybe even tripled in some instances.The music files seem to be unscathed. May I ask how many firmware updates has Sandisk done for the Fuze+? After applying 2.38.06 the functionality seemed quite an improvement over the stock Fuze+ .

i meant the database files not the partition eh but i think the concept is the same…

basicly just like a hard drive flag’s things for deletion but they still exist until actualy overwritten

so i’m guessing the index’s for Fuze+ content are sorta like an MFT record / HDD type of system ?

I dont think any method does a very good job at restoring the device to factory defaults

You’d think if you selected reformat it would be reformatted like on a hard drive but…

I thought it was interesting for a privacy point of view

you could then see what people are loading on their player no matter what they do lol

EDIT:

I wanted to make another comment regarding the playlists…

I posted info i found nothing more. I don’t use playlists and have NOT tested any playlist formats,

so i don’t really know what will or won’t work

@xpmule wrote:

i meant the database files not the partition eh but i think the concept is the same…

 

basicly just like a hard drive flag’s things for deletion but they still exist until actualy overwritten

 

so i’m guessing the index’s for Fuze+ content are sorta like an MFT record

In MTP mode you don’t have access to the underlying file system, so its not really like file table. Instead you’re just asking the software for a list of the files it thinks it has. Until it goes through and rescans its files, the results you get might be out of date. I suspect just copying a few files in MSC mode and then rebooting into MTP mode will be enough to force a rescan, although I’m not sure how smart the sandisk software is about it. Its possible it also needs to be synced to software like WMP first too.

@xpmule wrote:

You’d think if you selected reformat it would be reformatted like on a hard drive but…

Reformatting a partition does exactly what you would expect: erase that partition. It doesn’t reset all the info on the drive though because there is more then 1 partition, and not all of them are exposed in MTP or MSC mode. I think the only way to get access to the hidden ones is with third party software like rockbox, or using the recovery mode + imxtools. This is intentional, the firmware tries to prevent you from messing with its internals by preventing USB access.

My main point was that if data that is indexed is not removed through any method THAT in itself

could potentialy be a problem…

Imagine you had files on your hard drive that would never be removed no matter what you did etc

You get what im driving at ?

I think there is a misconception around here that restoring to factory defaults

does exactly that when in fact it does NOT

That i was trying to point out for people having issues.

I can’t be the only one that noticed this…

Anyway i have no idea what imxtools is, sounds interesting

It has been so long since  the last firmware updated, I am starting to wonder if SanDisk is working on frimware updates or features.  It could be that what we have is all we are going to get.

1 Like

If this firmware is all we are going to get then I will start looking for another MP3 player. I bought this mainly for audiobooks which the box advertised as doing. What a misleading statement. The player itself is solid and would work well if it had some decent firmware. I am sure all of you that has bought one of these know of the many problems so I won’t go through that but I believe that most could be fixable. It seems that Sandisk has forgot about their customers.

The Fuze+ has been out for 1.5 years, and while most Sandisk players are discontinued after 2 years so theres probably not too much new stuff coming.

I am unable to download the Sansa Media Converter.

I have a Sansa Fuze+ with 4GB of hard disk space. I downloaded the firmware updater last year and updated to 02.38.06 and downloaded the Media Converter just fine.

Recently I reformatted my laptop so I lost the media converter, so I downloaded the firmware updater (currently it says 1.304 while my Sansa is already 02.38.06) again. But when I try to update again, it says that the update service is not available.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance

@changsho wrote:

I am unable to download the Sansa Media Converter.

 

I have a Sansa Fuze+ with 4GB of hard disk space. I downloaded the firmware updater last year and updated to 02.38.06 and downloaded the Media Converter just fine.

 

Recently I reformatted my laptop so I lost the media converter, so I downloaded the firmware updater (currently it says 1.304 while my Sansa is already 02.38.06) again. But when I try to update again, it says that the update service is not available.

 

1.304 is the Updater’s version number, not your player’s firmware. You already have the latest firmware version (02.38.06) so no, the Updater won’t find anything newer.

You don’t need the Sansa Media Converter. You can use any converter program you find fits your needs the best. A lot of people like video4fuze.

in response to firmware update comments earlier…

i said the same thing recently and people told me i was full of it…

the updates were coming on a regular basis for ages but i havn’t seen one in a long time now

lookin like were gettin to the end of the line

I put Rockbox on my Fuze Plus today.

http://www.rockbox.org/wiki/SansaFuzePlusPort

Bottom of page under Alternative method I downloaded two files, the bootloader and the rockbox build.

Next I connected my Fuze to my machine, then extracted the downloaded zips to the root of the Fuze.

When I restarted the Fuze I had a menu to explore. I went into Database and allowed it to build.

I shuffled all my songs and started playing.

Amazingly, the device turns off and on within seconds. Awesome surprise. I managed to crash the device when I attempted to explore the radio function. Held down the power button, everything came right back. I suspect Rockbox will just get more and more awesome, and the wait isn’t likely to drag on. It’s usable and probably improving by the day.

Rockbox for the Fuze Plus is still in development but it seems quite usable to me for listening to music. Stop holding your breath on Sansa and load up Rockbox. I’m glad I did.

How long should it take the database to initialize?

@njones wrote:

How long should it take the database to initialize?

Depends on how many files it has to read.