Galaxy Player 5.0 – Root n Rom problems

I got a Galaxy Player 5.0 recently. I actually had one, hard bricked it. It was a mistake.

So I got that replaced, and didn’t do anything with it for a few days, then started thinking about it more and more. Today I decided to do it. I got all the right files lined up and … nothin. Odin3 … several varieties of that program on two different Win 8 computers … didn’t show up the player in download mode. The thing is, the previous device had been bricked via actually using Odin properly, just grabbing the WRONG file to flash caused the brick. But I used the stupid same computers doing stuff and it’s just so frustrating.

I spent half the day trying to get it to be recognized, uninstalled all the Samsung drivers and stuff, re-started. Re-installed, on and on, over and over.

I broke my favorite coffee mug in the middle of this horrid affair. (I’m really mad about that!)

So finally I just gave in and went to my offline XP computer with an SD card full of the files I might need.

I installed the Samsung drivers. I connected my player in download mode, Odin3 added! Hurray. So I put the kernel in I wanted to flash first.

Working … FAIL!

Uh oh.

Oh no.

Phew. Just forced download mode now. Not hard bricked. Thing is, it was the right file. So I looked up a few things and just went and got a full rom/kernel. Some directions suggested a PIT file would be needed. I tried that, but it wouldn’t move and do anything, until I just ran the one PDA .tar …

PASS!

Hurrah! I booted my player, booted up. Nice. Just, not really what I wanted. But it worked. But not really. I wasn’t able to scrobble with SLS as usual. So I ended up getting the Rom I had really wanted in the first place (was going to be using before with my first player attempt at this (which ended as a brick. It was the kernel, I grabbed the wrong one then … utter black brick.)

I flashed it as .zip via CWM, then booted in. Looked same as before. Restarted to CWM Recovery. Wiped and deleted everything. (Actually did this in a couple of trips, it needed it all) Finally I was in and it was different, as different as I wanted, but still, scrobbling, nada. So I ended up installing last.fm android app, and it works. Scrobbles for me, just more over head than I was looking for. It’s better than hating my player and getting no scrobbling done.

There are really very few options for ROMS on the Samsung Galaxy 5.0. I want as close to ICS as I can get with GB. I don’t want an ICS ROM since it’s way further advanced than this player can handle, me thinks. A lightweight similar GB iteration is what I got with Chip v.1.5

I didn’t have to install the kernel again, but I can, might, I don’t know. (Chip is sans kernel)

I’d love to have my phone as my music player, but they don’t make a nice wifi player version, and my phone is nowhere near able to come off contract, and blah, blah, blah. It isn’t good as my music player since it takes power for all the communication stuff, and getting that to stay mostly there and put my music mostly somewhere else …that’s what this is about. Figuring out how to juggle a bunch of devices … yes, a PS Vita, an HTC Evo 4G LTE, a Samsung Galaxy Player 5.0, and HTC Evo View, an HP Envy 4 Ultrabook, oh, and a PSP.

So, last week when I had a player rooted, I had google music and SLS and was scrobbling. I had a rooted beats app installed, and I had one older kernel installed with CWM and was going to flash a newer ROM and Kernel. I was scrobbling that way. Then I bricked it.

This time I didn’t try scrobbling first. I tried to not setup things (I have a growing list of junk devices in my google play apps list!) but it all backfired on me.

Well, I’m more knowledgeable about this end of rooting and romming. I’ve got my player where I like it, for now, and I’m open to better things, if they can be done.