sfbp

OK, so here's what I think you should do: - Completely remove everything including all drivers ("hidden") using - Make sure the MZ-S1 is unplugged and stays so. - Once you have completely removed everything, recommend a complete reboot (remember the registry only gets properly backed up when removing things if you reboot). After that make a restore point (let's be thorough here!). - Run your games etc with OTHER software and figure out if they are actually causing the grief. After all it may be that SonicStage is legit and the games are crashing it. - Once you have got past that phase for a few days or hours, try reinstalling Sonic Stage but under no circumstances do anything that would cause a NetMD driver of any kind to get installed. - If that works, try adding the S1 to the mix (with the netmd760.sys driver). Does it start to crash? I don't see any other way to conclusively prove what is happening. I recall my son had a CPU or graphics card that was overclocked and it simply crashed Windows (this was XP and W2K both) all the time until the BIOS timings on the memory and such were slowed down. Good luck, and we look forward to hearing of your endeavours.

The 760 driver, I assume.....? Or are you running perforce in WinXP virtual machine? If the latter, there's a 64-bit real driver which will stop you from having to run in a VM which may well have some glitches when heavily loaded. Look in the downloads here.

No drivers at all? Just bare SS for the compression capability? a. wonder if you need to turn off DEP? b. is it possible that SS only crashes when swapping? Or when starved? Just my $.02

http://www.sharp.co..../mddp700_mn.pdf http://www.sharp.co....c/mdds70_mn.pdf http://www.sharp.co....c/mdds30_mn.pdf Note: the english part starts on about page 27 in each case

Jim, I think it's time you put some sort of Ebay URL into your signature? Anyway here he is (decks cost a little more than portables, but that's between you and him): http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Sony-Portable-Minidisc-Recorder-Player-Repair-Service-/220859657553

You did a terrific job with the videos! I wish I were that competent. Stephen

In one short phrase: Jim'll fix it. You do not want to wreck such a nice machine, and he offers a most reasonable service (via Ebay/Paypal) which is why it says "respected e-tailers" in his info.

Well I will let camron comment further - but "we" appear to have got the D5C converted too (he did the work and I sat and directed traffic from the back seat, though I am sure he could have done it without help). I plan on doing almost the same to my MXD-D5C. However the D40 is still a bit of a mess (functioning perfectly though), and I don't want to have two decks ripped apart at the same time. Here you go, the link is added, and I think it's totally appropriate for it to be in a new thread, after all it's a different piece o' hardware.

I think it's wiz who has that one.

This is a very strange (and rather insightful) question. However it really is a whole succession of questions. Some facts: 1. Prerecorded MD's are recorded (and play back) by a completely different mechanism to all other MD's. Same difference between CD or DVD and DVD-RAM, the closest analogue to MD recordable. They are (by definition) Standard Play (SP) only. 2. NetMD disks by design (what are made in most MD/CD decks) cannot transfer TO PC. Period. You need a special unit, the MZ-RH1, the last one that Sony made. 3. Not sure about the final point. This sounds like you have more than one MD unit and are using it to record from the PC. If it is making a HiMD disk, these are not compatible with the older NetMD generation of unit such as you find in the combo decks. Also, if it is recording as NetMD (LP2 or LP4) via USB, it sounds as if your combo deck is not MDLP-capable. It *is* possible to make SP disks using SonicStage, but you have to look out for that option beforehand. Hope this helps.

Nope. The 707 appears to be one of the top contenders for "most failed overwrite heads", too. You need to find someone willing to fix it, and I think it's not completely unreasonable to send to Jim (Hoggarth) in England, as he offers a repair service for just such a problem. Or buy something else and keep the one you have for spares. If you are within a reasonable time (I forget the statutory limits on Ebay) this is the vendor's problem, not yours.

Doesn't that depend a bit on how the CD was read? I recall all the stuff about "oversampling" which I assume is routine now - but was only in high end players (I had one) 20 years ago. So if there existed a way of getting better sound off a CD (say 20 bits) wouldn't that actually be more permanently captured by 24-bit MD? I am groping here, since like you and everyone else I don't see how to get something out of nothing. However I keep seeing all this ABCD stuff in the circuits (and some CD's have EF as well). Is that not the 4 (or 6) extra bits? Just my general ignorance, would be happy to have someone fill in the gaps here. Interesting addendum: the TMS320DA708 chip in my Onkyo has a datasheet here. In the section entitled "Industry Standard Software" Are y'all still awake???? I see the magic phrase ATRAC3plus in there. What does this mean in the context of such a datasheet? Does this mean that in some way receivers with this chip are specially suited to ATRAC3+? I have no clue but it seems an odd thing to be claiming.

Good to hear from you. Fear not! I too have a D5C. The first problem so far is that it may not be quite so easy to find a signal spot. But in principle the circuit is just the same as the D40. Can you live with it turning the MD into pass through mode? (also it's definitely possible to hack into the CD only, separately) Second problem is that the 173 needs +5V. I am hopeful the SPDIF signal will be ok (ie will drive the 173). We can talk more privately if you wish Stephen

Actually there's a fair bit of evidence on this point (CD sounding better than original), both logical, and also anecdotal. More to the point if you record an analogue source to MD you may well get something better than CD quality, and eminently suitable for mastering a CD. This is precisely how I got into MD. My Onkyo TX-SR605 has a TMS320DA708 as the main DSP chip - it seems that most processing is done by this chip. Tell us what you know.

You've lost me. If the input is Fs 44.1 kHz then converting internally to 192 is upsampling, no?

Where the bit depth comes in is that now you can compress the CD sound more accurately owing to the wider dynamic range. This is actually the trick that enables MD to mimic a CD at much higher bitrate - by concentrating the bits where they are needed for actual sounds. Sony coined the term "psychoacoustic" and it stuck, being in wide use now. So repeated compressions and expansions are going to lead to rounding errors, essentially. Make sense?

See please

I will do pictures as soon as the whole thing is finalized. Meantime I am considering trying a more-readily-available 5V diode (the original ones are 3.3) for output on another deck.

I'm sorry. This is a technical subject though, not sure what I really can tone down. The Control A1 connection is simply an implementation of the internal I2C (or IIC bus, you can look it up here) which is the same that PCLink uses. The JB940 supports PClink, the JE640 does not - yet both seem to have very similar circuitry and both (also) have the Ctrl-A1 socket. As to the protocol that all these Sony devices speak, they mostly reduce to a sparsely-documented set of specifications known as SIRCS (for Sony InfraRed Control System) which is the basis of all Remote and M-Crew operation. It in turn grew out of "Control-S" specification.

This upsampling business confuses me a bit. Seems likely that when I feed my TOSlink to the input of my (Onkyo) AV Receiver which is 192kHz capable, presumably it upsamples to that before converting to analog. Does anyone know if that is the case?

Interesting! Nowadays one can probably pick up an E-11 or E-12 for the price of doing a mod like that. But you do end up with XLR and optical on the same unit which is otherwise unobtainable. Seeing as MD is inherently 24-bits, for the upsampling is it better to try and get a mod closer to the disk than at the optical out? Seems to me that by the time you are sampled at 44.1 you've already chucked out the higher resolution. If you are technically minded maybe it would be good to look at the decks which have 24-bit out, to see how to do this. That is, the JA555ES, the JB940, the JA33ES or the JA333ES (the JA30ES has optional 20-bit out only). Perhaps staring at the service manuals would give you a clue about the design. But I'm not sure what the advantage of upsampling something that just got downsampled, if you see what I mean. Stephen

Correct. Sony has ALWAYS said you need to have administrator privileges. But you do need to install NETMD760 BEFORE SonicStage. Or replace the drivers that the latter puts there. The "Ultimate" version does NOT include the 64-bit driver, as Sony has never officially supported Sonic Stage (the driver came from Japanese-only software which is effectively SS version 5.2) on 64-bits. If you have multiple units, you may have even more problems unless you manually insist on the driver every time. Good luck, and please keep us posted of your futher adventures Stephen

I glad you got it working. Not sure what you did, or what you mean about 2-steps. I will re-read your post. If you mean that following Sony's direction of rebooting was required, this probably arises out of something being required to be removed, not just deleted from the registry. In fact it's a good rule that when you DEINSTALL something, this is the time to reboot the system. You definitely do not need Virtual XP mode if you have the 760 driver installed, that is clear. And it will work for all devices we tried so far. Last night I heard of yet another device ID that we haven't seen, and the plan would be to add it in once the installation can be verified for both 32- (052) and 64- (760) bit versions of Windows.

All I can say is - it works. Numbers of folks have succeeded. Probably you have to REMOVE some drivers that got installed by mistake. Start with

Sorry, don't understand your comment.