May 9, 2025
Sadly, my MP3 player wasn't as easy to revive as I thought it would be.
The new battery appears to hold a charge, but the device will only power on if it's plugged in. If it's only got the battery, there's no sign of life. Now, the original battery was absolutely junk -- it measured at 0.0 volts. It just wasn't the only problem.
And that problem is kind of tough because whatever's wrong is beyond my ability to diagnose. There's no corrosion on the battery contacts, the PCB doesn't appear to be cracked, and beyond that I don't really know what I'm looking at. The local place that'll put a new screen on your phone won't even look at it. And the place in Chantilly that'll repair your old GameBoy (a device from more than 10 years earlier) also won't look at it.
At some point I remembered that I found an old multi-adapter cable while I was reorganizing. One of those hydra-like monstrosities from the days when everything had its own proprietary connector, so you had one inbound plug and half a dozen outbound. I saw it less than two months ago.
I have no idea what the hell I did with it. It's not in any of the likely places I looked, and I'm reasonably sure I wouldn't have thrown it out. But since I could potentially use it for the first time in fifteen years I can't find it. Because of course.
NewEgg has a USB-to-barrel-connector cable that looks like it might do what I want. Rather than drive all over the place trying to find someone to even diagnose the issue, never mind fix it, I may just try to work with what I've got. Getting the 5VDC that the player wants is no problem -- USB's native voltage is 5V so that adapter will do that with no worries -- but I'm not sure any of my battery packs will put out the 2 amps it says it wants.
It's only like $12 though, so why not? Maybe this one time throwing parts at a problem will work.
Edit, after the cord arrived: It did not, in fact, work. The cable has two barrel jack connectors on it, they're both the wrong size for my device.
