“skaos” mentioned in the Rockbox forum that the markings on the e200 v2 SanDisk chip is very similar to the ones on the newer m200 models (as compared to the older m200 models which use different ones – at least marked completely different). It seems to imply that the m200 series have v2 models too.
But more interestingly, I downloaded the latest v4 firmware for the m200 series and looked at it with hexdump -C. While the file is encrypted or at least scrambled somehow (update: I was wrong the file is unencrypted, contains ARM code and strings), it features one plain text string at index 0x420:
AS3525_2_0.cr_5_0_develop.00020021010305000500
AS3525 is the name of a SoC from AMS (makers of the AS3514 “Stereo Audio Codec with System Power Management” chip used in the Sansa e200 series as well as in the Sansa c200 series) so to me it seems a bit too much of a match to be a mere coincidence! Oh, looking for UTF16-encoded strings, there’s one present that takes away all doubts: “AS3525/27 Demo Player“.
We’ll see what more we can dig up to really verify this theory. Fortunately, we managed to get docs for the AS3514 when some Rockbox guys visited the AMS HQ in Austria so hopefully we can get some for this thing too.
Now we have yet another firmware file format to figure out! ;-(
The SanDisk branded chip in the Sansa Clip does look very similar as well. If anyone has a firmware file for this target I’d be happy to check it out!
Too pictures of inside of Sandisk Sansa e280 v2 , you can find them at this page:
http://www.esnips.com/web/zychda-Stuff
What ever happened to the talk I heard that AMS wanted to get Rockbox ported to one of their demo players? Maybe you guys could get in contact with them again and say that there are many people who would like to to help port Rockbox to their AS3523 demo player 🙂
For the e200v2 analysis, I got the v2 upgrade image from http://www.anythingbutipod.com/forum/showpost.php?p=186653&postcount=46 (it contains a .txt that actually is a .7z file) and that has the same strings => it uses AS3525 as well…
I’ve talked to one of the guys who were at the AMS HQ and got the docs to the AS3514, and he said he was gonna get in touch with them again to continue the talk since AMS themselves back then were talking about wanting help/guidance to get Rockbox to their SoC. Hopefully our existing contact will help us get docs for this baby. I guess time will tell!