Shoot me an email at [email protected] with some info about what's wrong with it

It had a little corrosion that I scraped off and neutralized with a little vinegar and then cleaned with ipa.

The motor bushings will eventually need a light oil but that's after many years of heavy use. I find that the laser sled rails get dry every two years or so and need a little grease (I've used general grease for nylon gears and white lithium grease). Avoid petroleum based lubricants as it can damage nearby plastic parts from off gassing. I'd inspect the mechanism yearly to hear if there's any excessive squeeking/mechanical noise and relubricate as necessary.

@@sjm4306 that's awesome thank you! Do you clean off old grease when acquiring a new player, before adding new grease? If so can you tell me what cleaner you use?

Absolutely clean off the old grease using isopropyl alcohol and cotton buds.

Because they are crap, I have much better headphones so why would I subject myself to the pack ins?

@@sjm4306 You aren't supposedly reviewing your headphones, you are supposed to be reviewing the mp3 player and that would include reviewing the included headphones.

The object of value isnt the included earbuds, it's the mp3 player. Am I supposed to also give the included usb cable equal air time to the mp3 player? No of course not since it's such a small component that's very common and the user will very likely substitute their own after purchase. I see the earbuds as the same, it's a courtesy bundled in but not a necessity that must be used with the player. The main course is the mp3 player so it deserves the largest attention.

@@sjm4306 How exactly would you review a usb cable? Yes, the largest part of the review is the device. But you couldn't dedicate 30 seconds to the sound quality out of the buds? It's your review. It's your channel. Do what you want. But I think people would expect a least a blurb about how they performed. Even at this low end, there is a wide range of sound quality from these things. They range from unlistenable to sounds OK. I buy earbuds on the low end because they are all poorly made physically and fail in a relatively short time. The other is my hearing isn't very good. For 20 bucks, I expect complete junk. For 100 bucks, I expect something of reasonable sound quality. Not great, reasonable.

@tarstarkusz I just dont see the point of wasting even 30 seconds reviewing what to me equates to less than 1% of the sum of the mp3 player it comes with. To me they wasted money including the buds since even $5-10 buds from five below will out perform them imo. And at the end of the day my definition of audio quality will be subjective so how much value is there really in "reviewing" 50 cent earbuds that will very likely change between batches based of stock availability from the manufacturer?

It's not strictly necessary for the player to function, just noise levels may be a bit higher and/or the player might be a bit more susceptible to emi

Yeah I mostly use it in vertical mode for datasheets and pdfs, it's perfect for those

I'd suggest doing a "dry fit" before installing all the electronics to make sure the hinge fits and rotates smoothly as well as pre threading the screw holes as they are often untapped and rely on self tapping screws. It may be necessary to sand/file/flush cut bits of plastic left over from the molding process. This will make installation smoother after all the fiddly bits are in place. The last thing you want to do is assemble everything only to find you have to take stuff apart and gently make modifications around super delicate electronic parts.

No worries, it's never too late to comment!

I wanted to inspect the entire front pcb in case there was extended liquid damage. Sure it's more effort taking the entire board out but better to catch any potential corrosion early to prevent worse damage over time.

Oh ok, I just got my new membranes in and will follow this video.

But is that side necessary to open up if I just want to do the x y b a membrane only?

Only take apart enough to get access to what you need access to unless you are unsure if there's potentially more liquid damage inside that should be thoroughly cleaned out.

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll see if I can find a good deal on one or if the manufacturer is willing to send one in for review.

I have no idea how to extract just the 200mb firmware partition (especially as it shows up as raw/unpartitioned) so I'd need to upload and pay for a 64gb file to be stored online indefinitely! If someone with linux dd knowhow wanted to help I could temporarily clear enough space on my cloud to send it to them to work on that.

@sjm4306 Thats fair enough, I dont mind having a crack at it tho. Should I send you an email or discord dm?

@partypiggaming9344 shoot me an email at [email protected]

I have extracted the firmware partition from my Clip Sport Plus (PCB designation Clippro-502-00.11). Flashing it onto a new SD card works and also creates a 16GB partition, which you have to format to FAT32 on the PC or the player won't boot. Then format the player and indeed all the storage will be available. (Also, it's in Czech, since my player was set to Czech at the time of this experiment.) I can upload it somewhere if you might find it useful.

YESYESYES that'd be awesome! If you post the link here I'll add it to the video description!

It's like how apple called their portable mp3 player "ipod", sandisk called their's "sansa". Sansa was simply the marketing brand/trademark for sandisk mp3 players back in the day (the original clips didn't even say sandisk on them but rather sansa). Sandisk stopped using sansa on their mp3 players though a few years ago but the term is still stuck in my head lol.

@sjm4306 oh interesting :)

Once inside the player the bottleneck will be the usb 2.0 port so there's no benefit getting a faster card imo

@@sjm4306 I wondered if a faster card might speed up the media refresh rate or responsiveness of the unit if you have a large card filled with songs, perhaps not really an issue. Wondering if the interface would get sluggish at some point after so many files are on the card.

I'd guess the tiny underpowered cpu is the limiting factor in that case. Iirc it's weaker than the cpu in the clip+ which is the reason these newer clips never got rockbox ports.

Alternatively, another approach may be to modify the firmware of the NW-S205F to directly drive modern displays. I've dumped the firmware and identified that the display updating routines are nicely abstracted away from display control, so I believe that it is possible.

Now that would be something, patch the firmware and use a passive ribbon adapter to a modern oled! Keep up the amazing work!!!

The rear glass is adhered to the metal frame with adhesive very similar to most modern phones. You'll need some sort of hot pad/plate/air gun to get the adhesive ware enough to separate the glass enough to slice the glue with a blade. Like I said the process will be pretty much identical to taking the back off a glass smart phone.

@@sjm4306 Thank you, I will give it a go

Yep it's a bluish-white monochromatic oled

Thanks! The audio quality for calls is quite good, the mic quality is good enough imo (definitely not the best I've heard but haven't had someone tell me they couldn't understand me). It has the same problem most other bt mics have, the audio is obviously compressed.

That's beautiful, great job!

@sjm4306 thank you🤝

You need to get all screws out or you risk cracking the plastic unfortunately.