sfbp

Agree 100%. My 810 (710 + radio-on-a-wire) charges batteries perfectly ever since I did the adjust; before it used to cut out much too early, and I was stuck with charging the gumstick in a wall charger instead. Of course this model has a charge stand, and it seems like the paradigm (sorry for the fancy word, M.O. would be better I suppose) is that such units charge whenever they are rested in the stand, meaning that often their batteries don't "run out" much. Generally batteries work better if they actually discharge most of the way, though with Lithium you never want to go "all the way". I have also noticed that my MZ-R91 (and one I bought my dad in England) is capable of reviving NH14WM's. That model was made in Japan. The NH3D's are reported to be particularly good at charging LIP-4WM, and this model was also made in Japan. Almost as if whatever gear they had at the factory wasn't quite calibrated correctly. Mains voltage is 230V 50Hz there, the same as Europe and Australia. Japan is about 10% or more less than here in North America, 100V 50Hz or 60Hz instead of 110 60Hz. Perhaps the test circuitry was developed in Japan and didn't **quite** do the job in Malaysia. Some systemic correction or drift, in other words. I found the adjustments were quite consistent, too - almost all the relevant settings needed things increasing by about 10% to meet spec. Coincidence? Stephen

I don't think the ICD-P620 is going to come even CLOSE to the the ICD-SX7x0/8x0/9x0 series in quality (which I have bought and reviewed), not a fair comparison at all. So-called "High Quality" on the P620 has a cut off at 6,800 Hz Whereas the ICD-SX750 records in PCM and whilst not quite as good as the PCM-M10, comes pretty darned close, and has some very good codecs (NOT mp3) that allow large amounts of music to be stored in compressed form on 2,4 or 8 GB of flash quite conveniently.

Absolutely. But you need the gear and some patience. Shouldn't be a problem to use different adapters at all. It needs 3V like all the other models that use NiMH battery (the main exceptions are RH1/M200, N10, DH10P, and NH1, I think, though there are some other rare ones like NH3D and EH1 - all of these are Li Ion and require a higher voltage). Even the old Electrohome multi-voltage multi-tip (if you are in the USA or Canada) work fine. But all the 3V Sony ones are interchangeable.

There's been some discussion about this before... are you sure the one you have is actually busted?

er.. well... it's a bit anecdotal at the moment. Our feeling is it should be working for ALL, and there is no evidence to the contrary. Certainly everyone who tried it got their unit working. What almost certainly does NOT work is the PCLK part.

I noticed how many more of the old crowd seemed to show up when the board isn't clogged by all these spammers. Maybe a coincidence, but one can hope.

I just posted the drivers in our downloads section here

Just got mine. Established the basics - that it works, can learn at least one command that I set up using the computer, and can handle multiple devices. Any advice, now you are an old hand? I came to the conclusion I should add devices with preprogrammed codes then change them after. Is there any quick way to try all the suggested pre-programmed codes for a given device? Or is it all-or-nothing, and you have to go back and forwards? I guess I am going to have to run the editor and move the laptop into the tv room. I haven't quite figured out how to set them up, but it looks like you can invent commands that you write on the LCD, so if there EXISTS some button with a name you've never heard of doing something completely new, it should be possible to come up with a screen display of that. But, as you, I am not that advanced yet. I tried the 1.0 version and got very annoyed because it insisted on using the wizard and would not let me into "advanced" (to me much simpler) mode. 1.1 is better (the download). It definitely needs a note to help the driver installer find the RmAx.sys and .inf files - most users will have the CD and it can come from there, but if all you have is the download, you need to mess around until discovering where it unpacked that stuff to. Just as you noticed. Also the way it switches between lists of things is a bit counterintuitive. Took me over an hour to realise why I could only see one device, because the others were on separate lines and I had to "page down" by pressing the "/1" at the top of the display. Once I passed these initially insurmountable hurdles, all was much better. Looks like I could spend ("waste"?) a lot of time on this little beast. Stephen

low voltages.... but if happening with every power source it's most likely a matter of re-adjustment of settings.

Apple is Sony's competitor, and I feel sure never ever gave Sony help or cooperation. What I have seen of the transfer software for Mac indicates that it is a bit well, er, half-baked. I would guess that this is perhaps not Sony's fault. Apple is more than a hardware vendor competing with portable players. They also competed in the online music market, effectively killing Sony's offering (outside Japan at least). <rant> What people in Sony and PC world like myself tend to get aggrieved about are Mac users who say "why is it so complicated on the PC?". For the Mac there's only one right way, Apple's way. At least Microsoft and IBM had the grace and common sense to give users lots of choices, and to keep them loyal by continuing to support those choices and legacy software right back to FDISK and FORMAT from MS-DOS. One reason being that in business, people will do anything to keep the "workflow" the same as yesterday. Macs never really had that problem, because for the first 10 years at least, businesses really did not use Apple products. </rant>

Mark, I want to say that I appreciate your contribution to the Linux-minidisc project. Good deeds are done in the night, they say. Sorry for being a bit grumpy, but the prevailing ethos here (Wiz is a noted exception) is fairly non- (or even anti-) Macintosh, simply because of the problem you mention with Mac not being supported by Sony properly. Mentioning iAnything is like waving a red flag in front of a bull, as most people who have found this board came here (or at least came BACK here) because they reject and are fed up with being told to buy expensive iPods that don't sound (to them) as good as MD. Even your chosen screen name seems like a kind of minor provocation. Yes I know, I should laugh, but religion is serious business. (on another topic I was totally incensed that to start the first decent versions of Windows 3 one had to type "WIN" at the dos prompt. Meaning, I would rather have typed "LOSE" or "<something rude>", than to have it hinted that by running that software I would WIN anything) So I apologize. I genuinely have nothing to add on the subject of things I know nothing about, ALAC, AIFF, iAnything, and so on. Welcome to the forums. Stephen

I have not worked on an R900. However Jim (.Hoggarth) can fix these machines. I myself recently acquired the gear to fix and adjust most MD units, but it sounds like most of your problems may be to do with the contacts for the battery, especially if the button difficulties go away when running on external Alkaline (not internal NiMH rechargeable) battery or from the proper charger that the unit came with. You might try that first before contacting either of us. Is the LCD unreadable? That's one reason I ended up messing with all this stuff on my NH900 (HiMD), with a very successful outcome. And a sure sign that the supply voltages on the unit need adjusting as per the service manual. You might be able to do it yourself...... Stephen

Not sure; I have never used their backup procedure. However, the most important thing you can do to your files is to decrypt them immediately whilst they still play properly. If you've done that then you can safely copy the .oma files anywhere and reorganize and re-import them as much as you like. Decryption requires you to run the Sonic Stage File Conversion Tool. It is recommended that you start it from within Sonic Stage - it appears on the main (central) library display (not trying to look at left or right branches for transfer) on the Tools menu. As soon as you get into it, and click "Next" (it may take a long time while it finds all your files, a couple of minutes anyway) you will come to a screen whose first TEXT (not the title) says: "Approx time required: nn min" or more likely "Approx time required: nn hours". On this screen you MUST un-check the box marked "add copy protection". The program will now go through a rather shorter scan of the database before giving you its final estimate of how long it will take to convert. (note that on subsequent runs, the first time estimate will still be very long, mine is up to 40 hours, but the second time estimate may be in minutes). Now click Next again and it will do its thing. Usually it overestimates time needed, as probably was written when CPU's were a bit slower. Maybe by a factor of 10. Apologies if you are familiar with all this. But the point is that now the files can be copied and reorganized anywhere you want without losing their playability/exportability. Also you can re import them onto a fresh install of SonicStage 4.3. If you knew all this already, then more apologies. In addition there is another way of decrypting them after-the-fact which has only just been discovered in the last month. But probably not quite ready for prime time so I won't trumpet too much about that just yet. Finally, just one point - don't bother to rip from CD to WAV using Sonic Stage. It's fast and useless and the result doesn't transcode down to low bitrates at all well. Currently I rip any CD's to ATRAC Advanced Lossless (takes a while but does a great job) which effectively preserves nearly all the info from a CD whilst being really quick to dump out to an MD. AAL does ***not*** have any encryption, which is another advantage to it. Directly importing WAV files ripped by a reliable ripper (EAC for example) works just fine, however SS has a habit of LOSING the permissions in the database especially when you play the same wave files with some other applications. This requires removing (from the library list) and re-importing the WAV file (i.e. no need to delete it, the rip will be ok and no need to repeat that step). Hope this helps. Once you have done it, you can experiment with how Sonic Stage views folders from the root of the tree mentioned in Tools->Options->Location to save imported files. Stephen

I did it and lived to tell the tale. Knowing NOTHING when I started. In the USA (I am in Canada) there is installer.com in Houston Texas, a good cheap source for the parts one needs. However you must be in the UK, and hopefully there is something similar. If not, you are at the mercy of the installer fraternity. Hope you know a good honest one. First thing, this MDLP car deck is probably the best one Sony ever made! I have one, and it has the much praised Type-S codec for LP playback as I found out only recently by peeking at the schematic (nowhere do they advertise this fact). So don't throw it out - I'll buy it off you as a replacement before you do that. You will need: a. a so-called "wiring harness" for your vauxhall that fits your make model and year of vehicle b. a so-called "wiring harness" for sony (standard within sony) c. the gubbins to actually mate the unit in the dash. If it accepts ISO then you are in luck and nothing whatever is needed. I've actually done two of these neither accepting ISO, and it still wasn't that bad. d. some (usually blue) crimp connectors to mate a. above to b. above, and a crimping tool. Really not a great idea to solder (the old fashioned way). You should be set, as now you can probably use the speakers in the new car. Much better not to retrofit those. Any more questions, ask here or PM me Stephen

As I thought.

It's in the minidisc.org equipment browser.

One adjustment that *might* just affect your unit that is completely easy to do without any equipment is the temperature compensation offset adjustment. Page 32 of the service manual. For the most important adjustments you need the Laser Power Meter to be sure of your facts. However this is something that the guys SHOULD have done when they installed the new head; or at very least copied the value of the iOP (written on the optical pickup) into NVRAM according to the procedure in the previous section on the same page 32.

Actually I think this one is quite simple. Do you have Synch Rec selected? (It's a menu item, NOT a switch, although on some units this Synch Rec is a hardware switch). See page 53 in both English and French manual(s). It's the last comment before "Menu de Lecture" or "Menu for Playback". Welcome to the forums. Stephen

Without patronizing you in the least, that's a very clever question. However, my spies tell me that in fact SS spews out LP2, which is then padded to SP (by the portable) with blank bits. Would that it actually sent SP... there might be great reason to hope so, as there is some evidence in resource files of SP-NetMD transmission capabilities in very early NetMD gear. But that would require every NetMD unit to have the full WAV->Atrac encoding capability. Some probably do, because they have optical in, which is after all WAV-quality sound. But many do not, which is most likely what motivated Sony's engineering decision here.**** The lowest common denominator must rule in any kind of mass market - we should not forget that, for a while, and certainly in Japan, mass market economics were definitely in play here. Maybe they even intended to, then discovered too late that USB simply wasn't going to hack it, at least the USB they had, which was 1.1. **** the issue of whether the CHIP has the ability to turn WAV into ATRAC is a separate one, and raises the question you effectively pose in a different way. But the connection between PC and NetMD unit is heavily encrypted (Sony paranoia) and there's no way now of engineering such a thing, I suspect. Lots of firmware involved, and no way to update said firmware as far as I know.

What on earth is Vaio Gate (I'm too lazy to go see!)????? ... later (I was in a hurry, sorry about that) I would make educated guess that you pointed Gate at some pictures on a memory stick or external drive or network drive that is no longer there. Ever wondered why the system is called Windows, not Gates? (not-so-subtle insider joke).

Fair enough, if it's a Sony product presumably they know what's safe. I recall floppy disk drives several aeons ago. The advice was: clean it, but only if it's dirty. Many people transformed their working computers into useless piles of c**p by following injudicious advice to "clean the heads on a regular schedule". You might easily go YEARS without ever needing to clean a floppy drive. Then some bad media would mean you had to do it 2 times in 2 weeks. The abrasion necessary (for it to be done by some insertable product) was, and is, a very bad idea. Far better to get the old Q-tip out (and some 100% iso-propanol) and clean the head. Exactly same for CD, MD, and DVD heads. Clean it when it's dirty. Stephen PS you don't comment if (regular) disks get hot after playing, or (especially) recording. This may well be a sign of trouble to come - not weeks but more like months down the road.

Like I said, that's religion. How can we help?

(sorry for shouting) EVERYTHING I'VE EVER HEARD SAYS (including advice from Sony, IIRC) AVOID CLEANING DISKS LIKE THE PLAGUE. Really, if that is your only problem, be entirely happy. Don't ruin a beautiful machine with a third party product that the makers (of the Sony) never intended you to use with it. Stephen PS I stand on my point about adjustment. One of the signs of incorrect adjustment of Laser Power is that some disks with different reflectivities are not working.

Running W7 presumably. Take a look at Task Manager and see if the software is running the CPU at 100% all the time. This is definitely something that would cause it to get hot. There are several possible solutions (and this applies to almost any laptop) 1. Change the power management settings so the system doesn't run at full power or only at full power for certain applications. 2. Check and see if one particular application is always taking huge amounts of CPU (you will have to figure out how to pull up task manager (starts with ctrl-alt-delete). Kill that app and see if CPU usage goes down. 3. Disable the wireless (WiFi and Bluetooth), see if things suddenly start cooling down. If they do, you may be able to operate by configuring the wireless to use less than 100% power (deep down in the configuration menus for the wireless adapter). 4. Figure out if some application software you recently installed triggered all this somehow. I have seen all these problems on an IBM Laptop running XP. W7 tends to use a lot more power. Good luck. Tell us more symptoms and I'll try to help. I don't think this is a Sony issue.