The thing is that firmwares above 9.0.43 cannot be extracted
. It seems that your friend used s1fwx to extract it but it won't work. The old firmware was written to a special location in the flash (at the beginning) and the size could be read. Now the new players that use the new firmware probably changed the protocol for firmware operations. Wire, the creator of the firmware tools said that he'll release a new version for v9 players but he said that an year ago and nothing was actually released. I have a thought that this tool will never come.
Try to use s1clone, that one will not search only for the firmware in the chip, it will dump all the contents. Also, the hardware compatibility issues are bullshit.... I tried to clone my own player before f/w and when I tried to restore the same image it said it's a different player. And I'm not the only who had this problem. Could you please share the clone file? Maybe I can extract the firmware with a hex editor.