Sansa® Fuze™

[Zeke_the_Geek]

OK, this is weird. I used the new Fuze to help me navigate the menus on the old one, and it got it to play. It plays, it has some charge on the battery, and the navigation wheel works. I used a flashlight to force some light onto the display, and I can tell that it works, except for the backlight.

So, it seems that the backlight and wheel light don't work, and the computer doesn't see the SD card when I insert one. I guess that's progress, at least in narrowing the problem.

[Black-Rectangle]

Bulbs do burn out.  But I would try reinstalling the firmware, just in case whatever controls the backlight has gotten glitchy.

[fritzb43]

Remember, Google & eBay are your friends, also Craigs list. I also got a deal on one at, of all places, ToysRUs.

[Zeke_the_Geek]

Just an update on my washed Fuze...

I popped the cover, and everything looks clean and uncorroded inside. The display and the wheel lights are connected to the motherboard through different ribbons (as shown in nice pix on a link from a previous reply), so it seems unlikely that those out by a common root cause, if it's a physical failure.

Since I can't see the display, I tried the second method of updating the firmware. The instructions are a little fuzzy, but I interpreted them as extracting the files in the ZIP file from the Sandisk site and put them into the root directory of the player. I did that, but it didn't seem to do anything, possibly because I was doing it wrong.

It still works, and I still use it more than my fully operational replacement. (How's that for sentimentality?)

[Black-Rectangle]

Yes, Unzip and drag the unzipped firmware onto the Fuze driveletter.

But there are two versions of the Fuze with different firmware--v1 and v2--and the update will only run if it's the correct version.  If your display worked you could see which version...but it doesn't.

When you disconnect after the update the Fuze should show that it's updating. If it didn't do that, then try the other version.

[Zeke_the_Geek]

It's a V2. I could verify that. The file names didn't match anything in the root directory. I had expected to be over-writing something. It must have something on-board that looks for those files and makes the update when it sees them.