Battery Charge and radio playing

My good old Sansa Clip 2GB did something totally unexpected last Saturday.

Until Saturday it’s been playing about a half-hour before it quits. It’s ten years old, I don’t expect a whole lot more. Sometimes it would go 45 minutes or even an hour. I turn it on, I check my watch, np, sometime in the next hour it dies and I switch to something that doesn’t have a radio.

Saturday it went 9.5 hours before it gave out.

Seriously, I turned it on, looked at my watch, and started doing things around the house listening to the radio. Frankly it outlasted me, I took a nap listening to it and when I woke up it was silent. You can imagine after six or seven hours I was beginning to wonder what was going on.

But when I did the routine again, the next day, after charging the rest of the day and overnight, it was back to half-hour, :45 or so.

The Question:

Does anyone have an idea how I can duplicate my successful charging routine?

I try to pay attention to how I charge it, in case I get lucky - but I seen to have missed my lucky strike.

I’ve got some ideas. I’m going to keep testing, and if I happen to hit upon the lucky combination I’ll post it here. I’m definitely keeping notes this time. But so far all I’ve managed is the half-hour routine.

FWIW:

I have a few wall-warts, different ampreages, and a few different mini-USB cables, including the original and some odd ones from back in the day.

So here’s the deal, the status:

The display has burned out. Over the last year it went dim and now it is dark. Even when I carefully look at it in the middle of the night and my eyes are completely adjusted, nothing. (Did you know the blue ring light does not light up when you push the buttons while it is charging? At least on mine any way. That helps when the display is dying.)

Background:

For as long as I’ve owned it the Clip has not charged while the radio is playing. But since the display gave out I try to keep it in radio mode. While it was going dark I documented how to get back to it just in case something happens.

What I end up doing is turning it off while it is unplugged, plug it in, -the radio comes on-, turn it off again.

The radio always comes on when it’s plugged back in.

I’ve finally gotten a routine that charges the ten-year-old Clip so I can listen to the radio for 10 hours.

Whether it can be duplicated, who knows. But here’s the how and what of how I do it.

Original Sansa cable, short, white with a ferrite ring.

One of my internet router’s USB ports.

I let the radio play until it dies. --Note, at this point, when I plug it into any other charger the radio comes on automatically.

Plugged into the router, the Clip blue ring-light will come on but the radio does not. That’s how I know it’s going to get a good charge. If I have to turn the radio/Clip off manually it will charge up long enough to listen a half-hour.

I haven’t tested it whle plugged into a computer yet. But I’ve repeated this method several times successfully. It’s nice to have my radio back.