Polaroid Snap Touch Firmware Corrupt

Hey, sounds like your Snap Touch firmware update went sideways — unfortunately, that’s pretty common with these older Polaroid models. When the menus start showing garbled symbols or hexadecimal-looking text, it usually means the firmware flash got corrupted (either mid-update or due to the wrong version being used).

Here’s what you can try:

1. Reinstall the firmware cleanly:
   • Reformat your SD card to FAT32.
   • Copy only the official firmware files to it.
   • Make sure the camera battery is fully charged before updating again.
   • Don’t rename the firmware file or remove the battery during the process.
     Sometimes a clean update cycle fixes the corruption.
2. Manual reflash (using your CH341A):
   Since you’ve got a CH341A programmer, you can go deeper and reflash the firmware directly. Open the camera, find the SPI flash chip (usually an 8-pin IC labeled something like “25Q32” or “25Q64”), and connect your clip to it. You can then dump the current firmware and flash a working image if you can find one online or from another working device.
3. Double-check firmware versions:
   Polaroid uses hexadecimal versioning, which can be confusing. For example, MM31.00AD.B00 is newer than MM31.0081.B06 — even though it doesn’t look that way at first glance. You can confirm which one’s newer by converting the hex parts to decimal with a quick tool on hexcalculator.org.

If you’re willing to open it up, post some clear photos of the mainboard — especially the area around the memory chips — and folks here can help point out the right chip to program.