sfbp

Something of a breakthrough has been achieved by the Open Source community, for those unfortunate folks who lost all their music files because of a Windows re-install, upgrade, or hard disk crash. The Sony Restore File Information procedure is no longer necessary for Sonic Stage (the famous error when it starts up and complains with an error and never lets you get to the main screen of Sonic Stage). The ffmpeg, ffplay, and (soon) VLC media player (will) have support for playing back and/or converting these "unplayable" uploaded files that have caused so many people to curse loudly (sometimes here on the board), when they discovered the Restore would not work. You can read about it here. Note that you will have to read right to the end of that thread to find out the details.

The service manuals are available here. Usually 1 service manual for all versions. My JB980 has only AEP and UK versions. There are less than a dozen differences. A few screws, a few capacitors, a reinforcing plate and a different main board (perhaps only the other differences injected into it). I remember 50Hz hum was always worse in the UK than 60Hz seems to be here in Canada. Maybe that's it.... It may well be you have seen the so-called AEP model on UK shelves.

I'm wondering if there are special filters for either mains or RF. I actually possess one such UK unit, and it works fine over here with a suitable transformer. Either sound technical reasons (my guess), or Sony did their research and there's a bunch of HiFi (wing)nuts convinced them that special treatment would sell.

Several possibilities: Jim Hoggarth fixes MD units, for a fee I mess with them, for no fee but I am half a world away I would certainly try to get your data back. But as you say, there may be folks a lot closer to home. Stephen

Update: this problem is now, at least in principle, done away with.

Addendum: software is indeed now working. Don't junk that HD.

I can now report that the problem has in a partial manner been fixed. I contacted privately a member of the team and found that last night a patch to ffmpeg (converter) and ffplay (player) has been made so that they actually run. You will see this when you try them out, instead of the command line being empty, the program will output something even if there is no parameter (file name). BE AWARE this only plays MDLP (LP2 132kbps, LP3 105kbps and LP4 66kbps) .oma files. No Atrac3+ decoder, so no HiSP etc. yet. Here's how you use it: (at a windows command prompt, with the file test.oma in the same directory as the 4 .exe files you will get, see below) c:\test>ffplay test.oma or c:\test>ffmpeg -i test.oma -acodec pcm_s16le output.wav (this produces a standard wave file called "output.wav"). I cannot speak about Mac or Linux, since these are definitely .EXE files. The VLC referred to is being fixed, and hopefully will be posted shortly. We may eventually host it in our downloads area. Here's the original discussion, there's a link to the executables on rapidshare in the thread somewhere. You may have to get busy with your translators http://www.minidiscforum.de/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=18579&start=780#p249385 This is pretty huge, guys. I had no part in this development whatever, other than as your humble scribe. Stephen

Please read OP's question. He wants upload, not playback.

Exactly where did it crash? Full message and/or screen shot please.

Despite its name, the linux-minidisc project is cross-platform. It runs on Windows. So (!) does VLC.

No. You will find the MZ-M200 is the same device including a microphone, for about $100 more. In Japan there were (/are?) companies renting out RH1 for this very purpose, owing to the high penetration of MD there.

The linux-minidisc project will have code that can access the encrypted files, soon. Currently it does not. Unless you can install a newer version of Sonic Stage you are presently out of luck. Try the "Ultimate" 4.3 from our downloads section. I can't remember if anyone has tried it (4.3) with Win98. If you have several machines, perhaps you can try on some OTHER machine first before you attack the busted one. It should provide a clean upgrade path. Once you have 4.3 working on a given machine, you'd better decrypt the files, which is possible with the File Conversion Tool provided by Sony - but (likely) only on the original machine the files were protected on. Whatever you do, no System Restore or messing with the registry, or reinstalling Windows, until you did this step. If you reinstalled Windows already, you may have to wait for the l-m-p to finish their work; there is a version of VLC that gets around this problem but it apparently only works in the hands of the authors of the code (not a good sign). That one may be solved as soon as today, so your timing may be perfect. I have no clue if VLC even runs on Win98, since it targets a lot of technology that effectively didn't exist in 1998, like DVD's and compressed movies. But I'll leave the problem of how to get the files off that machine, to you.... Stephen in Vancouver

In that case, it's well and truly dead, at least for you. If Sony won't do anything any more, perhaps some kind soul with a HiMD unit in England will see if they can read it. But given what you said - that you had used it and only it (I'm guessing 1000's of times) for years, there's not a lot of hope. However: the fact you see nothing at all, might conceivably mean the electronics of the drive. If you can't check with another 1GB disk or with another HiMD unit, you're stuck. I have seen 1GB playback and recording go wrong when normal playback and recording is fine - this is a sign that the laser power needs adjusting from scratch. Whatever you do, you must eliminate the NH700 as the source of the error. Start by getting a few 1GB disks, and go from there. If they don't work properly, the drive is worth fixing. In my experience, the NH700 is about the most reliable HiMD unit from this point-of-view. Don't even **try** to fix the disk medium, if you value it. Get it to someone that can read it. Someone here may offer.

That won't affect *anything* you care about. It's for exports and/or conversions. You have two choices on upload (to be found if you poke around the advanced "import settings") a. is 256kbps (Hi-SP) b. is LPCM (1411 kbps). (I assumed you are looking at legacy MD's, not HiMD, else you would not have a problem at all). Also you can choose to immediately make a wav file and specify the directory where all such conversions will be automatically dumped. A small word of warning, before you blindly choose LPCM. The LPCM files are not much use to anything. Even if you decrypt them, they cannot be edited by the only known editor for these types of files (.oma), Sound Forge 9 (and presumably I would hope, later versions). In addition, when you go to linear PCM, you actually lose on the dynamic range of MD, which is inherently 24-bits (LPCM is of course 16). So you will have to try out different things. For editing, you may actually be better to go to HiSP. Also the latest news is that there will be a way to upload and keep SP, on your hard disk. This is probably the best option of all, except that there won't for the foreseeable future be an editor (since Sony never allowed for 292kbps tracks on the computer). Please search or google about the File Conversion Tool. Unless you go directly to wav, the FCT is the only way to stop your tracks being gobbled up by the first System Restore or Windows upgrade/reformat that happens to your hard disk. Welcome to the Forums!

Important question: Can you see the disk in Windows Explorer? Don't try to copy anything, yet. DRM makes it useless.

yes it makes a file with the right title wav is an option, you get (also) an .oma file (these are annoying because restricted).

Did that. It (VLC) runs fine. Tried both ways, installing the zip file, and running the installer. There are no .exe files anywhere in either tree (the one from the install, or the one from unzipping the ZIP archive), so I cannot replace them. I put the .exe files in the same directory as VLC. I also tried putting them in the plugins directory (where most of the dlls from VLC seem to be located). I used the command line. I put test.oma in the same directory as vlc.exe. I also put test.oma in the same place as each of the copies of ffmpeg.exe. I typed "ffmpeg test.oma" (twice, once in each place that ffmpeg.exe is located). Then I ran the new version of VLC (which plays .avi files just fine) and opened test.oma with the F(ile menu. (I checked with a DRM-ed test.oma, and also with a non-DRMed file that plays fine in Windows Media Player on the same machine). As in the great computer game Adventure: "Nothing happens". In any of the 4 cases. I got **no error** complaining about missing DLL. I confirm nvee's experience exactly. nvee: did you notice that this is a win32 application and you are running win64? I doubt that is a problem, since W64 seems to be moderately clever about running 32-bit applications - but you might need the w64 version of VLC, if it exists. I suspect that there's something missing from the instructions. We look forward to hearing about this when you've actually tried it yourself, Adrian. I can send you a random .oma file if you like. Finally I went back and ran the install again this time turning on file association for .oma (only). I double clicked test.oma. VLC fires up but just as when opening by hand, no luck. I wonder if there is some windows component that needs to be tweaked?

Should be no problem with RH1, exactly what it was made to do. You will need a PC running Windows with a USB port. Let us know if you have questions. Good luck!

James, was this a 1GB disk by any chance? Or a 74/80 disk reformatted to HiMD? Or were you using the NH700 as a plain old MDLP or SP or mono recorder? Unless you have the RH1, it sounds like you were probably using HiMD, in order to be able to upload. I might suggest first that you take a brand new disk (of the same original capacity as the one which may have failed) never used before, and attempt to see what it can do. It's not much to say that the recorder can READ disks, if there's a suspicion that WRITING might not be working. Try recording something on it, a few seconds with a microphone. Make sure you complete the recording. Make sure you can take the disk out and reinsert it, and it still works. Make sure you can upload from it to your PC (assuming my supposition is right). If all the above is working fine, you mostly got a bad disk due to a glitch. But it could easily be that the laser power is borderline. If the above fails, you have most likely a busted overwrite head. If you can read and write 1GB but cannot read and write 74m/80 in HiMD mode (and vice versa), there's a laser power problem for sure. DO NOT try to fix the disk, please. I will consult and see if I can suggest some options. Thanks

Atrac is FP (floating point), ie naturally scalable. Uncompressed PCM is not, ie fixed point.

That's their ignorance, IMO. Mind you I notice your qualifier, "portable". Do they also say the same about MD decks? 24-bit floating point ATRAC will beat "pure" 16-bit CD any day of the week, especially if you have to edit it or process in any way at all. And most everything since Type-R and possibly before, is FP Atrac.

Here you go..........

Depends what you want. R3 is very very old, SP only. Very old version of ATRAC. Might not be pleasing. R91 is a fine, SP-only machine. I have one. Great for recharging gumstick NiMH batteries, too. R909 is MDLP (Type-R but not type-S), pre-NetMD. Basically the R900 with some things fixed. I have not had a 909 in my hands, but there are plenty who swear by it. Both the R91 and R909 take the "standard" sidecar that can hold an AA battery (there are a few "nonstandard" sidecars, such as the R37/50/55, and RH10/910).

The best source of MD gear outside Japan is undoubtedly the UK. I tried recently with translation (2 different translators) and neither Yahoo's own nor Google's could manage the Yahoo auctions, sadly. However if you succeed I would like to know, might cause me to try Chrome out. I got a personal connection to get me the only piece of stuff direct from Japan that I have actually obtained myself. However I read that http://www.rinkya.com is quite reliable. They will charge a 15% fee for their services, approximately. Stephen

This ribbon cable is the commonest known problem and may happen to a bunch of portables, as well including the N505. There are people who can fix them. From your name I assume you are in Oz, so no idea what (or who)'s down there. Ebay is almost certainly the best source. If you can read Japanese there are zillions of deals on Yahoo Japan (no Ebay in that country). If you want computer compatibility you might try HiMD, however stick to first (NH700/800,NH900,NH1) or third generation (RH1/M200) units. The second generation (RH10/RH910/M10/M100) sound very nice but are prone to failure on 1GB disks for some reason. If you can be bothered to get a deck or second portable for recording, the MZ-EH70 ("E" always means player-only) is very nice and built like a tank. The old units (Standard Play only) or any unit with "R" rather than "N" in the name cannot be connected to computer at all, not even PC->MD. However mechanically they are quite reliable, the MZ-R50 is probably the cream of the crop (R55 nice but not as reliable according to a service professional - an old article but specifically about this difference between R50 and R55). However if you get into all this and make some nice SP recordings the MZ-RH1 will allow you to upload them to PC. It's the only one. The MZ-M200 is the same machine including an external microphone that you plug in.