[Iridium]

In researching lost memory problem I found this email response from a chip maker to a question about this memory issue:

Dear sir

we do apologize for late reply

there may be some fake products using hynix chip in the market

the maker make a software trick so this fake product seemed to have more density than it really should be.

so you'd better contact the mp4 maker for complaint.

we can't help you to recover the initial density because it seemed to be software fake and original chip's density is 128MB.(HY27UF081G2M has 1Gb=128MB Density)

thank you.

regards

hynix semiconductor

This is a beautifully worded comment on this from another site :

......."I think what Hynix meant was that there are manufacturers of "fake" players that use real Hynix 128MB chips, but deliberately spoof the firmware so they report 1GB to Windows. i.e. the Hynix chips are real, but only 128MB.

I don't think this is a mistake on the part of the manufactures of the MP3/4 players - it is a deliberate ploy to rip us off and steal our money.

I say this because, not only does the firmware spoof 1GB, but even when you copy 1GB's worth of information to the player (which I did) it says the copy was successful and shows all of the files in Windows Explorer (i.e. the firmware makes sure the FAT gets populated correctly).

But when you play the music, it gives an error after 128MB, and when you plug it back into the PC the FAT is corrupted.

If you format with the supplied tool, it carefully avoids overwriting the spoofed firmware, and still reports 1GB. But when you format with Windows, it actually formats correctly and from then on reports only the 128 (119) MB.

Even examining under Linux and changing geometry won't make any difference - there *is* only 119MB available.

I checked. Mine definitely has a HY27UF081G2M (1Gb - 128MB) chip in it. So it never was a 1GB player - just faked to make it look like it was.

If you've bought one of these and you know how to contact the seller, demand your money back (or report them on eBay or whatever). Don't let them get away with it! "........

So,' Caveat Emptor' seems to be the lesson here.

IMMEDIATELY upon receipt of your new player, load it to it's capacity, then try to access the last couple of files. If you get ' FORMAT ERROR' format it w/ Windoze. If it shows less memory than what you bought, contact your seller for replacement / refund fast before 3 or 7 day warranty they offer on ebay expires.


Note : Binh is it okay to pull quotes like this, or is it better to give the link? Should this be a sticky?

Thanks,
I