repairing a flashrom device

recently my dad bought this flashrom mp3 player/recorder off ebay and it broke in about 1 week. it didnt come with any kind of warranty or anything, in fact, there wasnt even a company name or anything on the unit, the manual, the cd that came with it. the seller had a no refund policy and they were from like hong kong or somewhere and didn't seem to speak english, so i basically have nobody to call for a refund/replacement and i'm looking into fixing it.

i never got to use this thing before it broke, but it seems to just be a flashrom storage device with some circuitry, firmware, and a AAA battery that allow it to access the flashrom and play/record sound. what's happening is that it isn't detected at all when we put it in a computer. when it worked, we could just use it like a usb thumb drive without any extra drivers or anything. now, windows detects it, doesnt recognize it a usb storage device, but tries to install some kind of ADFU usb driver, which doesnt seem to accomplish anything. with a good battery, the lcd screen comes up and says "Starting up..." forever. i think that the firmware for playing sound, etc. is stored on the flashrom, so that would explain why it can't start up.

anyway, i want to know if there is any way to revive a flashrom device. i might be able to find some firmware for it once the flashrom is working, or at least use it for usb storage, it could hold like 512mb. i expected to find some guides or something on google about fixing broken thumb drives and stuff, but i havent had any luck. does anybody know anything about this?

slinky2004

I am sorry to have to say this, but if it isn't recognised, it has probably "died" in the physical sense.

I am assuming you have tried it on more than one computer?

As it is a "solid state" device, that is your lot, as the saying goes. :( ..............yes, they can be repaired with the right equipment, but the kind of place that has that will be charging big bucks per hour for the technician's time............and the kit is not worth it?

As a general comment; this kind of problem is frequently associated with failing to "dismount" the device in your software before physically disconnecting it. I have come across this many times with "thumb drives"

All I can suggest is try it on another machine or two with different operating systems. If there is a CD, then it must have driver software on it?

If that works then you need to uninstall it from the problem box, and do a driver software re-install, then you should be good to go.

Please do the installation with the device NOT CONNECTED and wait for the installation software to prompt you :)

thanks. i've tried it on several different computers, running linux and windows and it isnt recognized, so i guess it's dead. dad always safely dismounted(cant remember what windows called it) it so i guess it was just a cheap piece of hardware. i had thought that not unmounting or safely disconnecting a jump drive was just to stop the OS from crashing because it cant find the device, i didnt think it had any effect on the thumb drive itself. i've been unsafely removing my thumb drives forever and none of them have died yet, linux and windows have freaked out a few times though.