What if i break the firmware?

["haxx0"]

Hello!

I have a question about my iriver E10.

My previous Mp3 player, which was a cheap bad flash player from Creative, had a good feature.

If you did anything bad too the player, so that the firmware or file system got messed up, there was one simple thing to do: Hold the play button, and connect the player to the computer. That made the player replace the firmware with an "backup firmware" from ROM, and format the file system.

Then you could install new firmware, and restore your music files.

I would like to know if there is any similar feature for E10?

And also, what happens if for example the firmware gets destroyed? Is it possible to boot the E10, and is it possible to connect it to the computer without working firmware?

Could you please explain these abilities of E10?

Thanks in advance.

[rjeeves33]

The E10 doesn't has a backup firmware like that. Some PC Motherboards have a backup BIOS should the main bios fail. I wouldn't worry too much about the Firmware breaking. It is stored in Flash so isn't suseptible to movement damage like the internal hard disk. If Iriver release a new firmware just make sure the player is fully charged when you perform the upgrade just a precaution.

You should be more worried about dropping the player when it's on and damaging the internal drive.

Not really sure how you trhink the firmware will 'get destroyed' but no, without working firmware the player wouldn't work.

["haxx0"]

Ok, thanks.

I thought that since there are *some* firmware replcements for hard disk based Mp3 players (like Rockbox, ipodlinux, etc), there should be some safe way to restore a working firmware, if one has installed a firmware so buggy it cant even connect to the computer

But i guess i just have to be careful (which i havent really been with electronics yet)?

[asiandavid]

a firmware so buggy? iriver makes firmware that works well, but since i've had it, only two versions have been released, so it's probably thoroughly tested before it's made available to the general public.

["haxx0"]

Originally Posted by asiandavid

a firmware so buggy? iriver makes firmware that works well, but since i've had it, only two versions have been released, so it's probably thoroughly tested before it's made available to the general public.

I were talking about the firmware replacements. No offense to iriver.

Of course the official versions of, e.g. Rockbox, are reliable too.

But I am slightly talented in destroying or overwriting important data... For example, I have destroyed by mistake one NTFS partition and one FAT32 partition on my hard disk. And fixed them after some days hard work

And imagine what would happen if i tried to program a firmware myself

[XDeathLoRdz]

Oh well , just don't try that lol. Just kidding, i mean it a good chance trying out new things, just make sure you are rich enough to buy a new one if you are that talented in destroying

[Step666]

Just to draw a line under this.

The firmware is held on a separate ROM chip in the player, the sole purpose of which is to store the firmware.
There is no way to accidentally overwrite this, it just can't be done - the only way to write to the chip is to perform a firmware upgrade and to do that you need to have a specifically named file of the correct format with which to upgrade, so unless you went out of your way to create a file of that format and name and then tried to use it in a firmware upgrade, you wouldn't be able to overwrite your existing firmware.

This isn't something to worry about.

["haxx0"]

Originally Posted by Step666

Just to draw a line under this.

The firmware is held on a separate ROM chip in the player, the sole purpose of which is to store the firmware.
There is no way to accidentally overwrite this, it just can't be done - the only way to write to the chip is to perform a firmware upgrade and to do that you need to have a specifically named file of the correct format with which to upgrade, so unless you went out of your way to create a file of that format and name and then tried to use it in a firmware upgrade, you wouldn't be able to overwrite your existing firmware.

This isn't something to worry about.

Good to hear With my previous player, i once got it messed up really bad, just by trying to install Linux on it. Then, the back-up firmware was good to have.