Tag: mp3 players

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Some odds and ends for the Creative Zen Vision M

A while back I bought a bunch of old mp3 players on the ebay. I’ve fixed most of them. Sold one of them. I’m using one of them. The rest; a Zune 30, an iPod mini 1st gen, and a Creative Zen Vision M. All but the Zen I have fixed. Why not the Zen you ask? It’s because the device is very picky about replacement batteries and most(all) replacements won’t work unless you run an old firmware. Version 1.41.01 or older to be exact. And therein lies the problem, finding that firmware or one older will lead you down a rabbit hole of broken links, forum posts(most of which aren’t in English), and sketchy sites that don’t even have the firmware. Creative themselves no longer has the firmware either.

So… I decided to go on a mission to find this “golden firmware”. Searched countless sites, clicked countless links, translated who knows how many pages just to find it. And I have. Yay~ Not only that, but I’m hosting it here. That’s right. Here. Along with some odds and ends so no one else has to.

Zen Vision M 30GB firmware version 1.51.01
Zen Vision M 30GB firmware version 1.41.01
Zen Vision M 30GB firmware version 1.30.02

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Good news, bad news and a Zune update.

Good news first. The battery replacement for the Zune works. Now for the bad news. Had my first issue with the server. During it’s first reboot it wouldn’t POST. Like at all. I tried using a different outlet. Tried resetting the CMOS, and it was just a whole bunch of nothing. So like any other tech I started to take everything apart and just get down to the motherboard, CPU, and RAM. Still nothing. At this point I’m starting to get worried. I don’t have any spare CPUs or RAM laying around and not much money to spare to get replacements. So I decided to pull out all the ram and just try one stick at a time. That seemed to work. Tried two, that didn’t work. Tried just one stick again and that worked. Now two sticks worked, then three sicks worked. Just for the heck of it I tried all four sticks and much to my surprise it worked like there was nothing wrong. I ran memtest and had no errors. I have no clue what happened. Everything was fine before the initial reboot. I just needed to reboot to update the kernel. Everything seems fine now. I’m just going to chalk it up to a gremlin or something. I’m hoping it’s not going to be an ongoing issue. I mean in a pinch I can probably run this off of my Beaglebone or Raspberry Pi…maybe. I rather not have to try.

Also while taking apart the Zune to put in the new battery, the display ribbon ripped. At least on some boards the display ribbon is also held down with some adhesive. This wasn’t mentioned on the iFixit guide at all. Not that it would have helped to know. The whole guide is mediocre at best. I will try do write my own when I get the new display. At least a new display isn’t too expensive. It’s just about 15$ shipped off of ebay.

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Zune battery

Finally managed to get a replacement battery for the Zune. Yey~ It’ll arrive sometime on the 2nd. Then all I need to do is the actual hard part of disassembling and reassembling the Zune. Should be fun. I may do a write up. I should, but I can be forgetful/lazy

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My Zune has arrived

Got my Zune in yesterday and it’s a lot smaller than I thought. It does need a battery replacement but I already knew that. The important thing is that it and the dock works which they both do. I managed to update the firmware and fill it with music. Getting the dock with it was really nice tbh, seeing how they go for about 10$ and I paid 10$ for both the Zune and dock. A new battery is about 20$ so all in all I’ll be paying 30$ for a working Zune and dock.

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iPods, Zunes, and the resurgence of dedicated media players

Is it just me or has there been quite a resurgance of dedicated media players? I can’t even find parts or broken media players for cheap any more. I’ve been trying to find just a logic board for a 6th generation iPod classic and oh wow how the prices have gone up. Logic boards are now about the same price as a whole “for parts” player these days.

Even the lowly RCA K@zoo which was my first mp3 player I ever had is being sold in the 30$ range. For a mp3 player that only has 32MB of storage and only supports up to 512MB SD cards this is quite a bit.

Is this a resurgence in popularity causing scarcity, driving up the prices? Is it the lack of parts? I think it’s a bit of both. Scarcity of parts was slowly driving the prices up, but with the new resurgence of dedicated media players it’s caused what’s left in the way of parts and used players to become even more scarce.

I’m hoping it’s not going to get as bad as what happened with minidisc players. Remember those? If you’re from the USA, probably not. They were more popular in Japan but had a cult following here in the USA. Portable minidisc players go for quite a lot now with basic models easily hitting the 100$ mark for a simple netmd model.

Oh well though. At least there are plenty of CD players. For now at least.

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Just won a Zune on eBay

I thought I’d try bidding on a Zune 4GB just for a laugh. Didn’t think I’d win it since I keep seeing them go for close to 30$ or more. And oh how I was surprised when I actually ended up winning the auction only bidding 10$. It’s not in box, but it does include a media dock and seems to be in good condition except for the battery which needs to be replaced. Though seeing how it is at least 13 years old at this point that’s fine. I can easily get a replacement and solder in the new battery. Only downside is that it’s the red one and I would rather the pink one. Oh well, can’t complain much for 10$ right?