sfbp

The specs from Sony say charge time is 3.5-4 hours, generally.

I've already advanced a theory - most of the NiMH gumstick units after the R91 were made in Malaysia, and I think there may have been across-the-board low settings somehow. No proof whatever, but my observations are pretty consistent, and confirmed by Jim. Charging cutoff is definitely controlled by voltage.

I've actually revived a number of gumsticks that were DOA, using my R91 which was never "out" to begin with. I think the majority of the units you are using are probably in need of adjustment. Stephen

You may well find that it's not either battery's fault, if you read Jim's and my posts higher up this thread, as we have discussed this issue in some depth. Stephen

I would tentatively suggest that it, along with many other MD units, needs recalibration of the charging circuits after a while, along the lines I have noted in several other threads. Stephen

This post has been hidden, the correct place to go for these drivers is in the downloads section of this website, noted higher up this thread. Thanks

that sounds like fun - I may even try it as I possess exactly 1 CD-MD. Adjusting LP by hand works fine too, though.

Jim, are you sure any disk can act as test CD disk? (we know, and agree on the fact, that for HiMD an absurdly expensive test disk is needed).

Maybe I can "calibrate" said voltage against measured laser power....

Higher than what they were, yes. Blindly what the voltage readout said to spec. Not higher (than that!). Since EVERYTHING seemed to be low, I actually suspected a voltmeter fault for the first couple of units (and now think there's some sort of systemic error with Malaysian made units). However have had no ill effects, touch wood. So I cautiously implied that I might have put things a bit over, to allow for my old (duff?) voltmeter. I don't have any absolute calibration, but the voltmeter doesn't quite agree with the RPS either. Mind you, for the 810 (and other 3V chargers) I didn't use the RPS - it only becomes important for the HiMD units, I suspect. PS. I never thought of using the RPS as a way of monitoring charging on a routine basis. But it's a good idea.

Agree 200%, Jim. But he did ask.......

Do you have a voltmeter and/or regulated power supply with current metering? If so, then it's all in the Service Manual, pages 18-22. A word of warning - do NOT NVReset (the very first step) because you will lose all the (laser and other) settings that can only be got from having a test disk. In addition, there are certain settings connected with encryption that have to be changed (the "patch data") and you must steer well clear of this. ( if you do the unthinkable because you like to ignore the instructions above, the following discussion may help... but it will NOT fix the NetMD stuff, and your USB connection will likely be useless. http://www.minidisc.org/sony_mzr_reset.html ) Your objective is to stop at page 22 of the S.M. If you're an electronics whiz, you'll have no trouble with any of this. I fudged my way through it - but if you take one false step there's no way to recover, as many people have observed.

I (mainly) went through the adjustments for all the voltages (except the USB stuff which they refer to as VSB, I think). It's very fiddly finding all the test points on some units, you need a degree in Sony-ology to do it straight off, as one has to find the contacts on the other side of the board from what is shown, assuming you don't want to actually remove said board which is a whole nightmare in itself (requiring desoldering and resoldering between 5 and 10 contacts). I think I ended up increasing a lot of the voltages to meet spec. My assumption is that there is a cutoff voltage at which the electronics thinks the battery is fully charged. If this is set too low, the battery will never get fully "topped up". Once I did these adjustments, the unit seems to charge for quite a bit longer. And on the MZ-RH910, same thing. Jim, I should emphasise that the "getting hot" only ever happened once per battery, and that afterwards, it always charged nicely. This was long before I knew how to adjust the units, and it was from charging in the R91 in each case, which unit (to my belief and knowledge) is usually absolutely correctly set. Possibly because it was made in Japan, and there are some differences between the test gear and/or manufacturing processes (in Malaysia, where the voltage is 230 instead of 100) as opposed to the NF810 and many other models which do NOT seem to have been sold with the words :made in Japan: written on them.

You say "8 years" - implying that you may have some disks that are "legacy" disks (pre-HiMD). You can and should be able to upload HiMD-formatted 80m disks (and of course 1GB disks which are only ever HiMD formatted) without any drivers, however. The crunch may come when you try to upload the "pre-HiMD" disks to the PC. This is when you WILL need the 760 NetMD driver (and of course your RH1 since no other unit will actually perform said upload). Good luck, and come back to us here if you have any more comments or troubles. Stephen

"Ultimate" refers to the version of Sonic Stage, not the version of Windows. There are TWO Ultimates here, unfortunately. There was always a problem if one set up Simple Burner after SonicStage. IIRC it was necessary to reinstall Sonic Stage over top to get the low level components working. Presumably SB, being of a previous generation was naughty about what it installed and failed to check for later versions of OMG, or something like that. So at a guess my order would be (regardless of what was already on the machine): 1. Simple Burner 2. Drivers (760) 3. Sonic Stage Ultimate. I know for a fact that SS Ultimate (once again, simply the last version of Sonic Stage, nothing to do with Windows version or configuration) can be installed over top of previous versions including the Sony 4.3 and no harm will come. It may be necessary to delete some NetMD drivers and reinstall the 760 one, at the end, but I am really not sure of the exact sequence. I have given a pointer to the original thread detailing how to get rid of NetMD (indeed any other!) drivers you don't want, higher up this thread, in post #53.

insert a netMD disk into your unit, and plug the unit into the PC via the (USB) cable provided. When the popup about drivers occurs, point Windows at the driver you have (the INF, but all three need to be in the same folder). I suspect it may have more trouble if it's the zip file, so they may need to be extracted from it first. http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/disable-user-account-control-uac-the-easy-way-on-windows-vista/

Right here in post #26

You will need the Sonic Stage Ultimate. You will need the netmd760, probably best to install that even before Sonic Stage, but please don't shoot me if that turns out to be wrong. I have no idea which "others" of the 100+ files in our downloads you are meaning. No, you shouldn't need anything else. Whether Simple Burner will work with this netmd760 driver setup is unknown. (I bet someone out there has tried it and will come rushing forward). It is known to fail completely. As far as needing to be Admin, what you may wish to do is to get rid of UAC. Microsoft say this isn't a good idea. But it may be actually necessary for some legacy software like SS. For the moment try "run as administrator" for every time you use it (this may be a matter of making a permanent link of some kind, I don't recall how, and I still don't have W7/64 running myself, so this is the blind leading the blind to a certain extent!!!!). It is entirely possible that Avrin somehow got around this with the ultimate install (or that it's a later version of some components, which I believe to be the case), and your Administrator problem will go away. You can actually try logging in as "administrator". Stephen

I see what you mean, Jim. Yes, getting something that really charges the battery with an "oomph" at least once makes a huge difference. What often seems to happen is that on one of these charge cycles, the battery gets really hot. After that it may work a lot better. I heard tell that this corresponds to some breaking down of crystals within the battery - crystals that prevent it from proper functioning. Stephen

With the caveat that you download and allow Windows to install the driver from post #54 in this thread. It's in the downloads section of our site. Stephen

You need (in my opinion) to readjust the charging circuits and voltage adjustments generally in your NF810. That and only that will fix the problem, I think. Or buy an MZ-R91 purely to charge batteries. Worked for me.

Argh - plastic. Maybe you need the all-metal Qualia :) The other strategy is to be like Jim and start to buy used and/or broken machines for spare parts. Glad to hear Sony Italy has some spare parts! Let us know how you get on Stephen

Sorry but that isn't going to happen. The NetMD setup specifically excludes the ability to go TO the PC, unless you buy Sony's portable MZ-RH1 (also MZ-M200) recorder. Welcome to the forums!

Not sure. The biggest problem with large capacity flash cards seems to be access speed. Many are rated slow enough that the newer devices won't work with them. I am unsure where PCM-M10 sits wrt this - however if you ever look at Sony's instruction manuals there are endless disclaimers suggesting that operation of all flash cards is not guaranteed. Often you are *required* to have SDHC and/or class 4 or 6 (class 2 often doesn't cut it). The other odd thing is that from a low in 2008 SD flash card prices have rebounded something horrible, and you now pay as much for 4GB as you did 2 years ago for 16. The flash recorders with inbuilt memory don't cost much more than the memory itself in some cases. My concern about these SD cards is basically the contacts. Anything being inserted and removed frequently stands to get degraded and suddenly one day not work (either from dirt or simply something gives). The other issue is that Sony designed their Memory Stick Duo devices to transfer data 8 bits at a time instead of 4, IIRC, and whilst proprietary, they can honestly claim that whilst SD is more generally used, their MS sticks are *better* (mind you microSD may well be another ball game again). Funnily enough these are now at a bit of a discount, and most Sony devices will accept both flavours (SD and MSD). I'm happy with my inbuilt memory.