Ok. So for Christmas I get this mp3 player. And it says "Compatible with Windows 2000/XP ONLY!" on the box, but I ignore it because I've never found ANY hardware I cant get working on Debian...

Ok, so I get the damn thing mounted to /media/mp3 and I start putting some korn albums on it.. All goes well. I unmount the device and unplug it.

When I go to listen to my music, the files I added are not listed. So I figured I messed up and they never got sent to the device. Well, I double checked, and they are all there. They were in subdirectories, so I took them out and put them in the main folder thinking something with the subdirectories had something to do with it.

Same thing.

So I mount it again and start playing with crap. I delete two songs they had on the machine stock and I then tried to listen to my korn songs..

Nothing.

So I start doing some research in google. Found out there is a MyDb file on the device that is a SQLite database file that holds the track listings. This is how the files are listed in the device. So I found very limited software/scripts to update this file from linux. The main one I liked (and got to work half way) was gogear_mgr and opengogear. Both these things errored telling me SongTable is not in MyDb file.. So I scratched my head and kept playing with these programs. Well, about 3 hours later I realize MyDb is now empty. There is not one single character in it when i view with vim. before there was something, it was a simple line of text that said 'sqlite1.3" or something (bad memory). Thats it. But now nothing. So I started playing with it more and eventually, the file was gone. There is no more MyDb file on my computer or the device. It just vanished without a trace...

I sent an email to philips support asking them how to revive this MyDb file back to factory stock. Hopefully I can get a good copy again and keep a backup of it on my hard drive for when i mess it up again.

I read somewhere that without this file the device is dead. So yeah...

Does anyone know how to get this device working on Linux (i dont care which distro, they're all the same)???

Also, does anyone know how to get MyDb back???

Thanks for your help in advance everyone!

Ok, so I got the MyDb file back on the player. I installed my software form the cd onto my friend's computer and basically put it back to factory settings.

I also played with the Windows Media Player 10 (on XP) and got it to "Sync" my music to the device. It then played fine.

So I install a trial version of VMWare Workshop 5.0 for Linux and install Windows XP Pro SP2 on there. I get the device working on there, and get WMP updated, etc etc... Then it hits me... Windows doesn't read my linux drives...

So I learned a few ways I could go. I could use a program ext2fs (or something) for windows which mounts the physical linux partitions directly to windows (which didnt work because of VMWare). Another way I found out was to 'share' folders from linux to windows through the VMWare itself. So I shared my music directory.

Well, WMP is weird, and will not add anything to the device unless its in the WMP playlist (or media library). I have well over 6000 mp3s on my computer, so this was going to take awhile.. It never started...... It errored right away saying it could not read blah blha blah and then WMP crashed. Many times this happened. I could copy the music directly to the windows desktop then add to the playlist, but it was taking too long to do this...

So anyways. I ended up f***ing up my device again and its not playing anymore. And on top of the the windows i installed in VMWare got spyware and virii all over it already.

So, I busted out my old ass hard drive (8gb) that had Windows XP on it from years and years ago. I booted it up, installed the software and ran some windows upgrades, and by the time all that was said and done..... spyware... everywhere.

And it dawned upon me why I switched from Windows years ago. Spyware and Virii.

So I am faced with a suprisingly very challenging decision... Install Windows XP on my main hard drive to enable use of my new mp3 player and pick back up inthe never ending battle against spyware and virii that I was fighting so long ago... Or suffer without an mp3 player but keep my security on my desktop by keeping Debian Sarge installed....

Decisions decisions...

I formatted my entire drive (moving my music to my backup 80 gig drive) and I reinstalled Debian Sarge from scratch. I then proceeded to pick up where I left off with my mp3 player and tried openGoGear and GoGearmgr. Both applications are telling me the MyDb file has some kind of encryption its never seen before. So I automatically assumed it was a windows encryption thing.

On my brother's machine, the MyDb file does not seem to be encrypted... So I got to thinking, its a sqlite thing... and this is where I am lost. I have never heard of or used sqlite before I got this device.

Someone somewhere has got to know more information about this device and how to get it to work right on linux (any distro). The closest thing I can find is talk about the newer devices such as the HDD0xx mp3 players. I've tried the solutions for these devices with nothing but failures.

Please help me. Someone.