Repair badly disconnected MP3 player

snack · 2020-02-08 14:36:04

During a stalled file transfer I disconnected my MP3 Player (Philips GoGar RaGa 4 GB) and now it doesn't work anymore: it hangs during boot. For sure there's a problem with the flash memory, so I'm trying to see if I can fix it but I can't figure out how (and if it's possible at all). My hope is that something is wrong with the flash storage and that the firmware resides in a different storage device inside the player, so that wiping out the flash storage could do the trick.
When I connect the player to an USB port it seems it's correctly recognized:

# dmesg | tail
[ 2104.880064] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 7 using xhci_hcd
[ 2104.901200] usb 1-1: New USB device found, idVendor=0471, idProduct=20b4, bcdDevice= 0.01
[ 2104.901207] usb 1-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=5
[ 2104.901210] usb 1-1: Product: GoGear Raga
[ 2104.901213] usb 1-1: Manufacturer: Philips
[ 2104.901216] usb 1-1: SerialNumber: 18000000E0278D140002DCD4E2D40D14
[ 2104.904744] usb-storage 1-1:1.0: USB Mass Storage device detected
[ 2104.915205] scsi host3: usb-storage 1-1:1.0
[ 2106.894737] scsi 3:0:0:0: Direct-Access     Philips  GoGear Raga      0100 PQ: 0 ANSI: 4
[ 2106.924479] sd 3:0:0:0: [sda] Attached SCSI removable disk
# lsusb | grep Philips
Bus 001 Device 007: ID 0471:20b4 Philips (or NXP) GoGear Raga

No partition seems to be present:

# ls /dev/sda*
/dev/sda

nor it seems possible to create a new one:

# fdisk /dev/sda    

Welcome to fdisk (util-linux 2.35.1).
Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them.
Be careful before using the write command.

fdisk: cannot open /dev/sda: No medium found

I'm stuck at this point since any command I tried failed because "no medium found", e.g.:

# dd if=/dev/sda of=/tmp/r1       
dd: failed to open '/dev/sda': No medium found

Is there something I can try or is my player definitely bricked? Thanks.

seth · 2020-02-08 16:02:16

https://playingwithsid.blogspot.com/201 … layer.html ?

snack · 2020-02-08 16:43:09

@seth: thanks for the reply. I already tried those methods but they didn't work. The reset pin works much like a reset button on an ordinary pc: lets you hard-reboot the system but does no repair anything. Also the key combination has no effect on my model.

Thorsten Reinbold · 2020-02-08 17:24:00

Have you tried to connect the player to a windows system? AFAIK there is a repair option within the official Philips-Software.

snack · 2020-02-08 17:40:21

I tried with Windows, with two different recovery softwares. The first, Philips SongBird, seems to recognize the player when I connect it in recovery mode, but then it tries to contact a Philips website that does not exists anymore and the procedure ends with an error. The Philips technical service then sent me a firmware management program that should work with my player, but it doesn't recognize the player when I plug it. A lot of fun...

WorMzy · 2020-02-08 18:02:18

You might be able to connect to it using Gnomad2. That's what I currently use to sync music to my Creative ZEN X-Fi.

(Note: support was never confirmed working, but the Philips HDD/GoGear series listed under "Perhaps" at http://gnomad2.sourceforge.net/)

EDIT: Sorry, misread, and thought the file transfer wasn't working anymore. I don't think Gnomad2 has any firmware flashing capabilities. Sorry for the noise.

Last edited by WorMzy (2020-02-08 18:04:25)

Arch Linux

#1 2020-02-08 14:36:04

Repair badly disconnected MP3 player

#2 2020-02-08 16:02:16

Re: Repair badly disconnected MP3 player

#3 2020-02-08 16:43:09

Re: Repair badly disconnected MP3 player

#4 2020-02-08 17:24:00

Re: Repair badly disconnected MP3 player

#5 2020-02-08 17:40:21

Re: Repair badly disconnected MP3 player

#6 2020-02-08 18:02:18

Re: Repair badly disconnected MP3 player

Board footer