THE ' SONY ' NS-11 MP3 PLAYER

( Disclaimer : The procedure mentioned below involves some  risk factor. You may do it at your own risk. I am in no way responsible for any damages occurring during the process )
It all started when I purchased a 256MB MP3 player -'SONY' NS-11 for Rs 1500. I knew that it was a Chinese fake(from the price). Still I went on because it worked fine at the time of purchase. Back at home I found that I can’t store more than 120MB of songs. If so the player will restart at some point of time. I use Windows ME and it described the player as a removable disc of size 256MB.When I formatted the size reduced to 119MB !!!. Now windows detected the disc as 119MB and I can store only 119MB songs. But it was working fine with 119MB.I searched the net for some details and found many people with similar experiences. The real memory was only 119MB+ and it was buffered to show 256MB.
And I relaxed .....

Recently I tried to reflash the EEPROM with the firmware that I downloaded from a site. When i started reflashing. i found that the firmware version in the EEPROM is more recent than that of the downloaded one. I went on (curiosity ?) and reflashed the ROM successfully. But for my surprise the player never turned ON again.. The songs in the player can be opened in winamp. But there is no way to delete these songs or save more. It also stopped working as an MP3 player. I tried to format the player, but for windows the player is write protected. MP3 player disk tool gives an error as ‘The disk write protected. Please remove the protection and run again’. I thought i had killed the player by flashing the ROM with a wrong firmware which puts a lock. I decided to open the player.
 Now its time to do something .....

A look at the MP3 player's inside...

SPECIFICATIONS:

FLASH MEMORY : Hynix (Korea)
HY27UF081G2M

(See the '1G' marked on the chip, which shows the memory size as 1giga bits , i.e 128 mega bytes only !!)

CPU , RAM & ROM : ACTIONS AMP2051
 
Ok first i must remove the write protection.Then i can try flashing some other firmware versions.During booting, the BREC (boot loader, written on AMP2051) checks if the firmware is damaged or not , which is saved in the flash memory. If so, it enters on the recovery mode .To make the player run the recovery mode, the firmware should be corrupt or it should be made to sense so.I found that when i shorted the legs numbered 41 and 42 of the flash drive(IO pins) , the player started to run on recovery mode and the write protect lock had gone. (To do this, remove the battery , short the legs , and connect it to the USB port). Now i am free to reflash the player and using a suitable version of firmware the player recovered. And  i relaxed..........
 
  • Note Added on May 2007 : Now I use a 1GB Philips (not a fake, Hi)...
 
  • Note Added on June 2008 : Using an Apple i - Pod Nano 2 GB...
  • Note Added on May 2009 : Using an Apple i - Pod Nano 8GB....

 

All MP3 players in action......
 
  • 2010 : Using an Apple i -Touch, 3G, 32GB