Your cord may be breaking. It’s probably worth spending a few dollars to try a generic replacement cable.
To get firmware, go to the sticky firmware post above and click the Manual Firmware/ All Regions links. It helps to know whether your hardware is version 1 or 2–look at Settings/info/System info to see whether your firmware starts with 1. or 2. 2 is a different hardware from 1–it is not an upgrade.
http://forums.sandisk.com/t5/Sansa-Fuze/Sansa-Fuze-Firmware-Update-01-02-31-amp-02-03-33/td-p/139175
If you want really older firmware, try experimenting a bit. Get the link for the current firmware and change the version number (at the end) to lower numbers. For instance, the current link is http://mp3support.sandisk.com/firmware/fuze/fuze01.02.31.zip
So change the end of the link–1.02.31.zip–to 1.02.28.zip, or 1.02.24.zip , or lower, etc. Some of those numbers lead to old versions, some don’t.
And yes, you can downgrade. Get the older firmware, unzip it and drag the file onto the disk drive that says SANSA FUZE.
