sfbp

OK, sounds like you are doing the best possible thing then. My wrong guess.

I am beginning to come to the conclusion (from afar as it were, since I don't own an RH10) that this is something that may happen when the battery is not properly charged, either with a charger into the unit, or (better) with a purpose-built battery charger outside the unit that just charges the battery. Charging by USB seems to lead to all sorts of weird borderline conditions where the discriminating circuits in the machine just stop working. Can you confirm that you tend to leave it connected to USB and that this is normally the only way you charge the RH10?

In my limited experience, you can never charge a battery via USB as well as you can by the dedicated charger. That in turn is worse than a battery charger designed for the batteries that is totally external to the unit. In addition using the 3V supply with the in-unit charging circuitry makes the whole thing hot. This is probably not great from the point of view of longevity of the RH10, either. Actually I wonder if the OLED failures are related to charging rather than usage. Not having owned an RH10, I really cannot comment, however.

Nope, there's two in my town. I can also get something at our main line of drugstores here.

What would you consider ridiculous? This for instance?

It looks like the standard 3V NiMH charger, nothing out of the ordinary. There are lots in your local stores, usually multi-voltage and multi-headed. Or you can use the charger from any MD that runs on NiMH gumsticks.

The vertical alignment is some kind of servo (feedback) mechanism. Get far enough out of whack, and it will recalibrate. I mostly saw this effect on other units (IIRC the NH700) when I opened them up to do some kind of surgery, and the head was either too low or too far from the surface of the disk. If this only happens after prolonged usage without charging the battery properly, I would guess that something in that feedback circuit "gets tired". Completely cutting power and/or putting a decent power source causes the recalibratory "clunk". Check?

Yeah, that's when I get two inscrutable Japanese lines that are not selectable, then disappear.

Welcome to MDCF! As far as I know, the situation is: Windows 64 - no chance. Windows 32 should work on either. You can find a version of SonicStage here with everything perfect. Let us know if you need more help. If you have W64, you're going to have to run a W32 virtual machine. Whether you can do this by simply checking a box to tell it W32 compatible, or have to start a separate VirtualPC session, I am not sure, since I haven't actually run 64-bit anything. There are folks here who have. Also you should tell us what you are trying to do, especially since this is your first post. We might need a bit more information to be able to help you out of wherever you are stuck.

I'll try and get a picture but there seems to be nothing I can select. The jog lever simply gives me the next (or last) track, sigh.

Holding down the display button does nothing. Holding the enter/menu button gets me two lines of Japanese which disappear after a few seconds, and don't seem to be scrollable. Not always the same depending on context.

I just got my hands on RM-MC40ELK for the first time. A bit scratched but functional, and was the right price. Here's my question... several different places it appears to lapse into Japanese. This may well be a function of the unit it is attached to, in this case the sold-in-Japan-only(?) EH70. The most obvious example is one quick press of the "display" button. This gives me time left on the current track (hoorah! I had almost given up looking for this in a portable, being a sine qua non on MD decks) and then below it some Japanese I cannot read (preceded, I think by the number "1"). Does anyone know how to make the menus (whether of the EH70 or something to do with the remote) all English? There are no menu or group buttons on the EH70. Thanks

The 610UI was one of the last that offered Atrac-CD playback. You could get one for $50 if you tried. I think the only real advantage of the line out setting is that the level is locked at 23 (Avrin?) but other than that you shouldn't suffer too much Maybe worth disabling the Euro-cripple volume limitation if it is known to interfere with the sound output quality... I have no idea. Atrac CD (ie equivalent to HiMD) beats LP2/MD in my opinion, perhaps because it's built in to the head unit. Also holds more (equivalent to about 4 or 5 MD's).

Don't think so. I think there are significant timing problems with upload from RH1 to PC, that might even have represented a practical difficulty to do with the USB connection, back when NetMD was specified. Avrin mentioned lots of releases to the firmware, that makes sense right? Sure, Sony was paranoid and encrypted as much as possible later for HiMD, but they had no reason to include a command to transfer bulk data TO the PC. This was by design, and possibly by necessity.

I would have thought that the Sony CDX-GT610UI would do both. However it seems a bit of an expensive way to use the precious RH1, when memory sticks are so cheap. I don't know why you have to remove the remote of the MD (ie lineout from the headphone socket of the control), as audio is passed right through (the tweakings to the sound happen in the MD unit itself). There is a remote commander that you can probably buy that will perform most playback functions, that has the right control jack to go into all MD portables. Look out for auctions for any unit with a car kit (such as the MZ-N510CK, but there are others too) and you will get one for free. The exact model of the one I have (not the same as the above, but is the one that comes with the 510) is RM-MC25C.

The RH1 I have is made in malaysia. There is a second build, silver in colour, which is sold only in Japan. Perhaps that is made there. I know several people on the forum have one, so maybe someone will jump in and answer. Screws - two on the bottom, two on the back, and three more when you open the clamshell (the fourth is blocked but it was the outside ones that ended up loose in my particular case). I think the two on the back were the ones I noticed. Off topic - on my EH70 (second hand) ALL the screws were loose especially the two visible when you open it. Cannot answer the laser question.

Currently we think that the units simply don't have firmware commands they can respond with to actually send bulk data. They can clearly send header info, but that's not enough. Seems likely the software limitation is in the firmware of the device.

The linux-minidisc group is now sure that the RH1 in fact uploads pure SP. It has been decoded too. However this capability is not (yet) built into any piece of software you and I can try.

With any luck the radio will be restored to full functionality. I find it is a bit slow to turn on when running on rechargeable batteries, if that helps at all.

Note that this error comes as it tries to connect to the internet. Is it possible that you have Zone Alarm (or the equivalent) preventing it from doing so? (I rather thing it uses a standard http request but stranger things have been known). However as Avrin says, forget 3.4. And forget your old recordings if Sonic Stage says you can't do anything with them, if they are from the old pc. Note: this should not apply to MP3's but I have almost no experience with MP3. This is a MD forum and your player isn't a MD recorder.

I only diagnosed this because I wanted to use the radio which is always the most sensitive to this operational problem. The other remotes (which will work in the NHF800) don't seem to suffer, either because they don't have to communicate so many values (no radio) or because they have (numerically) less actual contacts. I have bought replacement remotes (the 37LT will work fine, incidentally) off Ebay for never more than $25 IIRC. There didn't seem to be any point to pay more for the remote than I did for the unit. If the unit is really busted which I sincerely doubt, you could probably get an NH700 (same thing) off Ebay UK for less than $79 provided you find a seller who is willing to deal with you (send an email and ask nicely). However, as I mentioned, I don't believe there is anything actually wrong with either unit or remote - just the contacts. And if you want simply to switch to a non-radio remote you may find one for about $10 - that will work fine.

Focus error is definitely an indicator of the vertical movement getting messed up. So this should be happening only on 1GB disks. I do recall the RH1 doing this to me,... a long time ago before I discovered it's not a good idea to leave connected for very long periods. It's a scary sounding sort of noise, but generally doesn't recur once the poor thing gets its act together once more. There's a way to clear the error log in the service manual, but it sounds like the suggestions I made in fact fixed it. So now what you see is a record of the error (does it have a date or "time since" associated with it? I don't recall) going back to the last time you heard the "clunk". Right? Took me a while to figure out how to join the topics because there was no way to get them on the same page, would have been easier if you found the old thread and appended to it. No worries, though.

Get some contact cleaner in a spray can. Remove the L-shaped plug that leads to the remote, from the main unit. Spray the metal terminals of the removed plug with contact cleaner. Wipe it off, perhaps even (if this doesn't work first time) abrade the surfaces with a little steel wool or a very sharp object, taking care not to leave any debris that might short one surface to another. It took me almost a year (and one discarded remote) to figure this one out. Explanation: The remote depends on changing resistance at the NHF800 to send its messages. If the contacts are dirty then the unit will see erroneous messages. There is nothing to fix in either remote or MD. Note: even if some cleaner is left on the jack before insertion that may not be all bad. However I would NOT try to spray into the socket, you've no idea where it might end up. Good luck and welcome to MDCF!

Summary: one way USB transfer only with this model. The only model capable of upload is the MZ-RH1, and that only with actual recordings from mic, optical or line in - not for downloaded (USB) tracks. You can play back your tracks via analogue cable into PC sound card from this unit. Or you can buy a deck with optical out and do the same thing optically into your PC (which will need some way of receiving that signal). But what you were trying to do simply was not allowed (or allowed for) by Sony.

Yes! The guys are a bit busy working on their PhD's. The biggest problem is currently the encryption for HiMD in both directions. However they did prove that SP actually gets sent, and they managed to decode some of it on the PC side.