Ola Lindberg

After fixing three different mp3-players with the same problem I’m starting to see a pattern of bad soldering on the connections for the ear phones plug. Fortunately the fix is easy if you have a basic knowledge about soldering.

I’ll go into detail for how I solved the problem with a SanDisk 1GB, MP3-Player (model number: SanDisk SDMX1-1024R).

Before you begin, remember that if you have warranty for your product try to get it replaced before. This fix will void your warranty!

Start by removing the three screws as in image 1 and 2.

Image 1

Image 2

Then you remove the plastic shields on both sides as in image 3. This was a bit tricky, but if you are careful and try to lift it up in one side you should be fine.

Image 3

Image 4 and 5 shows how it should look once the shields are removed.

Image 4

Image 5

Then you lift up the plastic body on one side, this was also a bit tricky, so be careful! Image 6 shows what it should look like.

Image 6

Remove the “main board” as in Image 7.

Image 7

Then you remove the card that holds the ear phones plug by lifting it. Image 8 shows the ear phones card removed.

Image 8

I could then see the bad soldering on the connector for the ear phones plug and I replaced that. Once I was confident that my new soldering was good I put the mp3-player together again and it worked.

Today I needed to build a menu consisting of images for a new website we are launching in a couple of days. I wanted to use a simple list with the links and use the background property for each li element to show the images. The text in the link-images were rotated and that caused a problem, I had to hide the default link text when the style sheet was loaded and display the text when the style sheet was unavailable (if you for example are having visual problems or use a PDA).

The next problem was to have a nice way to change the background image if a link is active or if a link is hovered. This can be done using JavaScripts, but I wanted to use CSS instead. This can be achieved using the a:hover pseudo class and output a class=”active” for the active element.

If this sounds like something you need, read the following:

• Stuart Langridge describes how a background image can “override” the default text in an element
• Pixy describes how rollovers without JavaScripts can be accomplished
• SimpleBits describes how these two techniques can be combined

Update (060731): I have found one problem with this solution. If you surf the site with CSS enabled, but images disabled you are not going to see the menu. I have not yet any solution to this, but I’ll update this post once I have found a solution.