Properly Broken Device

Last week I wrote about "The Broken Device Dilemma", when something you hardly use breaks. Do you try and fix it, or do you throw it away? Of course, if you're me you try and fix it. It's all about the journey. Right?

Anyhoo, my lovely little Sony audio player failed. The battery refused to accept any charge.  It was as if the cable was broken. Of course, being Sony, it's a special cable, not a standard usb one. The good news is that replacements are very cheap, so I got one. 

It didn't work. 

However, playing with the device left me thinking that the battery was broken. This happens with Lithium Ion batteries. So, it was onto eBay to source a battery. I managed to find one, ordered it and it arrived today. Fitting it was great fun. Number one son found the service manual and I had a happy half hour this evening undoing sticky fixers and soldering the replacement battery in. 

It worked. Yay!

The player woke up and played some music at me. Great stuff. But it did seem to get very warm. And then the WiFi stopped working. And then the battery failed. And now it behaves just like it did at the start of this story. Oh well. It looks like something in the player has failed and is taking so much power that that the charging circuit can't keep up. So I think it is properly broken. 

Oh well. Now I have to ask myself the question "If a device you hardly use breaks, to you replace it?....."