BROKEN DEVICE...CAN WE FIX IT? YES WE CAN!!

MACGYVER, THE SANSA FUZE MUSIC PLAYER IS BROKEN!  WHAT CAN WE DO TO FIX IT?

I NEED EIGHT DOLLARS!

*one week later*

IT'S FIXED, THANK YOU!!

Today I'm actually quite overjoyed since I fixed my $80 8GB Sansa Fuze media player.  Yes I "fixed" it before but this time, I actually had to do some research and buy spare parts.  I bought it back in July 2010 and haven't stopped using it.  The problem is that over time, the spinny wheel wouldn't always register.  I had to open it up multiple times just to see if there was something inhibiting the circuits or whatever, but any corrections I made were temporary.  In June 2011, the wheel wouldn't react AT ALL (no picking songs or changing volume).  The device still worked but without a wheel, I got pissed and started to rip the thing apart.

This is the device in question.

I ripped everything apart inside the spinny wheel.  I deduced that the culprit is that the strip that connects the wheel to the device (the orange thing with the five circles) just didn't work anymore.  I stuck that thing into the device repeatedly but I couldn't get it to register except maybe 0.001% of the time (suggestive, maybe?).  At some point, the Sansa Fuze "fried" as the screen flashed white, blacked out, then wouldn't turn on again (there's no words on it...F*$%#n thing sucks!!).  So I assumed the whole device was fubar and that I should just say goodbye to the thing altogether and buy a new one.

Somehow, I held out throwing away the Sansa Fuze and a day later, I go to flick the power switch on the device and VOILA, it comes back on...so the thing goes from dead to alive...resurrected from the dead!  Alright, now if I can get a functioning wheel from another Sansa Fuze I can fix this bad boy and bring it back to life.

So I buy another Sansa Fuze off of eBay...a broken one that cost $1 (plus $7 S&H).  Think about this whole ordeal as an organ transplant...taking organs from a dead guy to resuscitate a barely-living guy.  And I wait a week and trust me, that week was HARSH.  I was bitter that I couldn't listen to my happy music.

And I knew full well the risk that the Sansa Fuze I bought may also have a broken wheel...but it looked too "pristine" for the wheel to have broke--probably the guy dropped it and shattered the circuitry rather than the wheel itself.

So today, my package arrives in the mail.  I take the front cover (wheel included) off the recently purchased Sansa Fuze (which was a pain in the ass since they clamped AND glued the thing down), stick it on my old Sansa Fuze, fidget with it and BLAMO, it's alive, IT'S ALIVE!!  IT WORKS, I FIXED IT!!  Oh, and I didn't have to format/erase the memory or anything!

Rock on dudes.  Fixed an $80 device with $8 worth of parts.  Now if this thing breaks again in the next two or three days, I'm gonna be super pissed.