I've mentioned this before, but you never really know what you're going to get when you pick up "unconfirmed stuff" from Japan via Buyee. We make educated guesses to get stuff that's in decent condition or that maybe powers on via an AC adapter, but not via battery.
I know the red/pink ones light up red and I'm going to get a yellow one to test soon!
The player actually worked fine after the usual battery cleaning, but the remote kept doing something weird... Whenever you slid the Hold switch over, it would stop the playback and turn off the player!
Obviously, that's a bit annoying since we want to be able to use the Hold switch if we put the player in a pocket or something and don't want the controls to be accidentally pressed!
Well, I've never opened up one of these, but I figured I'd start. SPOILER ALERT - it was a quick fix!
The small plastic buttons on the outside actually push down on small metal raised buttons that can be interfered with easily. It could be dust from the factory, debris that got in there somehow, who knows? I got in there and cleaned it with alcohol and it was working in about 30 seconds of work!
Now I have a fully functional remote that doesn't shut down the MiniDisc player!
Not all remotes will be this easy to work on, but I do like how the Sharp ones are put together since they're pretty straightforward with screws. Many of the Sony remotes are quite a bit more delicate and hard to put back together once you've taken them apart.