Using the Sony NW-E00X on Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, etc.

Introduction – Don’t Worry, It’s Easy!

My wife recently obtained a Sony NW-E002 digital music player. It’s a nifty little thing – but to get music on to it, they only supply a Windows-only program which converts your music into Sony’s ATRAC format. But what if you don’t use Windows? Or what if you do use Windows, but don’t like Sony’s provided software?

There are 5 steps – skip down to the first you that you need help for!

Sony Walkman NW-E00X
  1. Install the pre-requisite software: Java 6 Runtime
  2. Install the pre-requisite software: FFMPEG
  3. Download “NW-E00x Mp3 File Manager”
  4. Prepare the player before running for the first time
  5. Start using “NW-E00x Mp3 File Manager”

I am using Fedora Core (Linux) – but you will be able to use these instructions to help you with Ubuntu, Mandrake, FreeBSD or Mac OS X or whatever, providing you use your head!


 

1. Install the pre-requisite software: Java 5 Runtime

We are going to install Patrick Balleux’s “NW-E00x Mp3 File Manager”. But before you can do that, you need to install some other bits. The first is the Java 6 Runtime Environment.

For Linux, I downloaded the self-extracing RPM, which can be obtained from this page: http://www.java.com/en/download/linux_manual.jsp

Download Java

Having downloaded the relevant file for my computer, I needed to run it with administrative permissions. From a terminal, I ran this command (Ubuntu users may need to use “sudo” instead of “su”) (note that when I did this, Java 5 was the version to use; now Patrick recommends Java 6):

% su -c "sh jre-1_5_0_10-linux-i586-rpm.bin"

 

2. Install the pre-requisite software: FFMPEG

“NW-E00x Mp3 File Manager” uses FFMPEG to convert tracks to Sony’s format. As a Fedora Core user, the simplest way to get FFMPEG is to use the Livna repository. First you need to install the repository, then install FFMPEG from it. For me, the two commands were (replace ‘6’ with your version of Fedora):

% rpm -ivh http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-6.rpm
% yum install ffmpeg

If you are using another distribution, there will be an equivalent way of doing this. Windows users can download suitable files from http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=174319 (under “Optionals”). Note that you may not be legally entitled to run FFMPEG because of patent restrictions in your jurisdiction – you should make your own enquiries about this first.



 

3. Download “NW-E00x Mp3 File Manager”

Now it’s time to get Patrick’s “NW-E00x Mp3 File Manager” software. It doesn’t need “installing” – just downloading. The latest version is 0.13 which requires Java 6.

Download it from http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=174319. You’re looking for the latest version of “nwe00xmp3man”.

Don’t run it yet – you’re player isn’t set up. Remember that you alone are responsible for everything you’re doing here!


 

4. Prepare the player before running for the first time

  1. Mount the Walkman as a drive on your computer. (For me, this meant plugging it in, and waiting for a window to appear on my desktop from which I could choose to mount it). Mount WalkmanNOTE: I’ve had a number of correspondents who couldn’t get their players to work, for whom the crucial error was at this step. Their computers chose to mount the device in “lower case” mode – i.e. in filenames were translated to lower case and new files were created in lower case. This won’t work. Look at the device’s properties to correct this if your files get copied over in lower case.
  2. Copy the .jar file which you downloaded in the previous step onto the player.
  3. Move the existing “OMGAUDIO” folder onto your computer somewhere (as a backup).
  4. Download OMGAUDIO.zip from http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=174319 (under “Optionals”), and extract it so that there is a folder “OMGAUDIO” on the walkman once more.

Your player should now have the .jar file and the copied OMGAUDIO folder on it. As mentioned above, make sure OMGAUDIO has not been put into lower case (omgaudio).



 

5. Start using “NW-E00x Mp3 File Manager”

You’re now ready to go. Launch “NW-E00x Mp3 File Manager” by running it from the Walkman. You may be able to double-click on the .jar file; I had to run it from the command line (note that I was usin a version which is now superceded):

% cd /media/SonyPlayer/
% /usr/java/jre1.5.0_10/bin/java -jar NW-E00X_MP3_File_Manager-0.12.jar

The first time you run, a file “playersize.txt” will be created on your walkman. You should edit the first line to show the correct number for your model (it cannot be automatically detected).

If you see “OMGAUDIO???” in the window that (eventually) appears, then this means that the folder created in the previous step couldn’t be found. Either it’s not there, or you haven’t moved to the walkman folder before running the .jar file (see the “cd” command above).

NWEManager Main Window


Thank You!

I’d like to thank Patrick and others for producing this software.


Links:

  1. Download Sun Java Runtime Environment 6 for Linux: http://www.java.com/en/download/linux_manual.jsp
  2. Download Sun Java Runtime Environment 6 for other operating systems: http://www.java.com/en/download/manual.jsp
  3. Patrick Balleux’s “NW-E00X MP 3 Manager”: http://nwe00xmp3man.sourceforge.net/
  4. My homepage – links to many other interesting things here.

Feedback / E-mail / Anything I forgot to mention?: use the e-mail address on my homepage. (Most queries to me have the same answer: the reason you see “OMGAUDIO???” is because you forgot to change your current directory to the base of the music player before running the NWEManager software).

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