Well, I recently ordered a Sansa e280 from Amazon. I was looking for a good mp3 player that the open-source firmware RockBox supported. I noted that the v2 series was not supported, but Amazon did not state that it was such a model. You can imagine my disappointment once it arrived.

After debating whether or not to return it, I decided to keep it. v2s are out now, so v1 I assume will be discontinued - RockBox will eventually support it. And I’d like to provide aid to the RockBox team however I can. Unfortunately I have not looked into the firmware so I will not be much help in the actual development, however I will provide whatever information I can regarding the player, as the dev team does not own any v2s.

Using the Sansa e200v2 Series on GNU/Linux

So, in deciding to keep it, I ran into a few problems. It was a bit frustrating, and in order to help save you guys some of the frustration, I’ll post some information on how to use it with GNU/Linux. Specifically, Ubuntu Gutsy.

Connecting to your PC

Right when my Sansa arrived, I had a big problem - Ubuntu didn’t seem to recognize it. Depending on your firmware version, there’s a couple ways to solve this. I assume this applies to other distributions as well.

Before you begin, you need to load the necessary module. When it could not recognize my device, I checked dmesg and noticed the following message:

[38018.977087] usb 2-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 6

Entering the following command in the terminal should solve the problem of your device not being recognized:

sudo modprobe ehci_hcd

You probably don’t want to run that command every time you restart your computer, so open /etc/modules in your favorite editor (I recommend VIM, but gedit may be easier for some) as root and add “ehci_hcd” to the list. For example:

sudo gedit /etc/modules

Check your firmware version:

1. Start your Sansa e200v2 and navigate to the “Settings” menu
2. Scroll down to “Info” and select it
3. Note your firmware version at the top (ex: V03.01.14A)

Firmware version 03.01.14A:
You must put the device into MSC mode:

1. Go back to the “Settings” menu
2. Select “USB Mode”
3. Select “MSC”
4. Connect your device to the PC with the supplied USB cable

Older v2 firmware versions (03.XX.XX)
You need to place the device into recovery mode:

1. Turn the player off
2. Slide the top button into the lock position (toward the headphone jack)
3. Hold the rewind button (|<<)
4. Plug the USB cable into the player and computer
5. Keep holding the button until your distribution recognizes the device (in Ubuntu Nautilus will display the device after it mounts)

If your device did not mount, please ensure you loaded the ehci_hcd module as discussed above. Run “dmesg” from a terminal to see any errors if it still does not work.

How to correctly disconnect

If you just pull out the USB cable from your device to disconnect from the computer after writing data, chances are you may lose something. If you have written data to the device, unmount the device before disconnecting the cable. Ubuntu users may use the following method:

1. Open Nautilus (if it’s not open you can go to Places - Computer)
2. Either on the left sidebar or, if you’re in “Computer”, in the main area, right-click on your device (it may be labeled “sansa”, “disk”, etc)
3. Select “unmount”
4. Wait until a balloon states it is safe to disconnect the device, then you may remove the USB cable.

You may also use the “umount” command from the terminal.

Upgrading the Firmware

Above I mentioned two types of firmware. If you do not have the newest version, I recommend that you get it (so that the USB Mode menu is available). To upgrade:

1. First download the V03.01.14A firmware from this website
2. Connect your device to your PC and place the firmware file into the root directory of the device (for example, /media/disk). The root directory contains the AUDIBLE, MUSIC, PHOTO, RECORD and VIDEO directories.
3. Disconnect your device from the computer (SEE ABOVE FOR THE CORRECT WAY TO DISCONNECT YOUR DEVICE)

Alas, No OGG support

I was rather annoyed and disappointed to see that SanDisk did not add OGG support in their v2 series. All my music I had converted to OGG format from mp3s and I had deleted the old mp3 files. So, I had to convert all of them back (I still keep them in OGG format on my computer) in order for the Sansa to play them. Once RockBox works, out with the mp3s again.

Copying Music to the Device

Once your music is in MP3 format, you may copy it to your device simply by placing it into the “MUSIC” folder. You may organize the music however you wish - feel free to place them in their own subfolders. As long as they are within the MUSIC directory, Sansa will recognize them.

Note that, for users who use MTP mode (Windows users or Linux users with MTP support), those files are not visible in MSC mode. Similarly, files in MSC mode are not visible in MTP mode.

Deleting Music from the Device

In GNOME (I’m unsure with others), when you delete a file, it places it into a trash folder (unless you delete it with the “rm” command or use the Nautilus delete command rather than “Move to Trash). The files will not be removed from your device if you simply pull the USB cable, but the device will no longer list the music. So, it’ll be taking up space, but will be in a hidden folder (.trash). So, use the above method to properly disconnect from the computer. If you do so, it’ll prompt you to empty the trash on the device.

Music Metadata (Song Title & Track Order Problems)

You may notice that some of your music isn’t properly displayed. The title, artist, etc may be displayed as “Unknown”, or the title may be the filename. This was something that had frustrated me for a while. So, I have a fix for you.

Download EasyTag (below step for Ubuntu users):
sudo apt-get install easytag

Once you have EasyTag installed, run it (for Ubuntu users it’ll be under “Applications - Sound & Video”). Don’t get too carried away yet. This is the part that frustrated me. If you try anything now, you may still have some problems. You’ll be able to save the track titles, artists, etc, however the track number will not properly save. So your tracks will be out of order. This is because the firmware does not support ID3v2.4, which is the default for EasyTag.

1. Go to Settings - Preferences
2. Select the “ID3 Tag Settings” tab
3. Select “ID3v2.3″ for Version
4. Click the “Save” button

Now we can get to work. EasyTag will attempt to get as much information as it can from the filenames and other sources, so you should not have to enter much, if anything, by hand (I didn’t have to).

1. On the left, navigate to your device’s MUSIC folder
2. Wait very patiently while EasyTag retrieves the songs. This may take a while if you have a large number of songs with long filenames.
3. All the songs listed in red have to be saved. Check through the list and make sure EasyTag generated them correctly and make modifications as needed. Or, just skip this step if you’re lazy and trust EasyTag’s skills.
4. Select “File - Save File(s)” or click the corresponding button in the toolbar
5. Don’t forget to unmount before disconnecting the USB cable

Tada! You should now have properly named songs and correct track listings.

Album Art

This one also bugged me. Some other sites suggested using EasyTag to embed the album art in the MP3 file itself, but it never worked for me. So I figured out some alternate solutions. The Sansa was designed to work with Windows Media Player, so I looked at some old folders back from when I used Windows, before I ditched it for GNU/Linux. It would save the album art as “Folder.jpg”. So I copied Folder.jpg to the folder containing the album I wanted art for on the device, and sure enough, it worked!

1. Organize the tracks into folders for their albums
2. Get a hold of the album art for your tracks. I use Exaile as my media player, so I simply went to “.exaile” in my home folder and retrieved the album art from there.
3. Place the album art in the folder containing the tracks for that album, and rename the file to either “Folder.jpg” or “Album Art.jpg”. Case-sensitive.

Enjoy your album art

Playlists

Yes, the v2 series supports M3U playlists! In EasyTag, you can generate a playlist by selecting files and clicking “Write Playlist…” in the toolbar. Save it anywhere in the MUSIC folder - you may also save them in sub-directories.

Rockbox Development Progress

I’ll add more information on the Sansa if I can recall what else I had looked into. However, my true interest is in RockBox. Therefore, you can track the progress via the following links:

http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/SansaE200v2
http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php?topic=13961.0
http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php?topic=14064.0

Good luck!