Article 6HHDN Accessing an old USB MP3 Player that has no driver

Accessing an old USB MP3 Player that has no driver

by
starkid
from LinuxQuestions.org on (#6HHDN)
The device is an Onyx 4GB by Mach Speed Technologies. I disconnected it while the firmware was being updated in Windows XP. I can't do anything further with it in Windows because no driver is found even when I'm connected to the Internet (which I tried in Windows 10 or 11, not sure which) and because the device does not show up in Device Manager (which I observed in Windows XP and Win 7 in addition to Win 10/11).

On (parabola) linux the device shows up with lsusb just as well as my other usb devices, but it never shows up in /dev or with fdisk or gparted. usb-devices shows that its Driver=(none), which I assume is the problem. All other usb devices work fine and have drivers listed. I'm using the same usb cable I used to connect the device in linux before the incident, and I've tried different usb ports and three different computers.

The user manual says the device has a "removable hard disk which can be directly used as a U-disk without installation of driver in Win2000 and above," but there are no instructions on how to do that.

The manufacturer is out of business and I haven't been able to find a driver elsewhere. Given that the device is still detected, is there some way I can access it for formatting or anything at all? Can I force linux to use some sort of generic usb driver for the device?

I was able to access the device in some minimal way via recovery software that was (I hope) from a company that bought out the manufacturer. However, nothing seems to have changed except that the device is listed as "SigmaTel, Inc. Player Recovery Device" by lsusb. I simply ran the recovery software in a VM that the player was attached to; the device was never mounted and I didn't have anydirect access to its internals.
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