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Chris, cmon, I just got 40 MD + an NH600D for Can $50. Half of those disks were new and unopened. Lots of people routinely read ALL the messages on the forum so that they know they didn't miss any. I know that's what I do. Have a nice day. Peace.

The uploads from legacy formats are much more limited... because there is so much less information transferred. For example you cannot fill out Artist and Composer fields until you get to SS, unless you started with HiMD. Even if there is timestamp information I think it doesn't get sent?

Don't think you can. The only way would be to "normalize" or scale the file before putting into SS. This may have the effect of making what goes via the optical too loud. It's a pain because you have to make wave files and normalize those. There are no software tools for manipulating ATRAC directly. However having manipulated them, you *can* leave the wave file in SS for sending to MD. But since you only get LP2 quality no matter what, I would stick to SP into optical for your favourite recordings. Until you get a HiMD, that is

The Terratec has optical IN and OUT; at least you must get the model that has that feature. There's no need to get the fancy one that does 7.1 surround and higher data rates, 5.1 Aureon (and the cheapest one of these) is all you need. Yes but the basic thing digital I/O does is guarantee no further degradation through distortion, hum or "wrong" compression. The original ATRAC (SP, 292kbps) is so good that you will not hear artifacts in the 1411kbps sound that you get from any MD that does digital out. This magic (and why I got into MD as a way of saving old analog stuff with only one analog step in the chain) is probably why Sony spent so much effort protecting the rights, only releasing them (via RH1/M200, same thing) when the format was almost dead.

Not only that - the HiMD unit must have recorded IN HIMD. To upload "legacy" recordings to PC you have only two methods: a. a MD deck with optical output into a sound card (Terratec, also in Germany, is nice) or b. an MZ-RH1. This is the ONLY unit that uploads to USB stuff that was recorded on your N910, for example. (I exclude using lineout to your sound card... of course anyone can do that but you are completely at the mercy of the quality of that connection). Sorry if this puts a damper on your plans. Stephen

Yeah, the time that Sonic Stage is the time of transfer, not the time of recording. AFAIK you are out of luck. Sorry. Maybe someone has figured out a way around this...

Yeah looks like Sony got cheap at some point. Yet the message in the manual implies that magically somehow it will work. I am mystified. Maybe just try it - press the record button (goes into Rec Pause mode) and now turn the timer OFF (not the power switch on the MDS-JE480), ready to record. I am guessing it magically knows to do the right thing. Most people leave their unit in "Standby" mode so power is always actually on. But these machines are fairly clever at waking up and doing the right thing - maybe they made them smart enough to do it without a special switch on the MD deck.

If you leave the titles blank (not particularly recommended in my view) on the MD, SS will add date and times instead of title. However you now have zillions of files with very similar names. Best thing is to title the minidisc before upload, using SonicStage. Maybe I don't understand the problem....... care to elaborate further?

Slide the timer switch to REC (I cannot be sure about the 480 but it's that way on all the standalone decks that I possess. Nothing on the MXD-D400 but that's life, you cannot have everything).

True. If you really want the NetMD tracks... The only model I am 100% certain allows you to upload out of the optical port from a NetMD disk is the MDS-JE640. There may well be others, but it is the only one that I have touched that does. It's also capable of editing NetMD downloaded tracks, and I am pretty sure most later models are not.

There's a whole bunch of MZ-NH600's in Australia for US $50 (and a whole bunch of goodies). These might be the same source that I bought mine from a while back, and this is a much better price. This unit, as you know includes optical/line in. Search for NH600 and the results are something like this The shipping to the US is only about $35, too. I had a much bigger problem to buy direct, I am thinking he's finally unloading them. The only problem is the charger needed but: 1. it's the same output as most of the other chargers (3V) and you can buy a cheap one in a store and 2. the unit also works off rechargeable AA's and (I think) also USB when connected to PC.

The problem is not going to be 64-bit support, I think. What you have to do is to configure the serial card as one of the ***STANDARD*** serial ports so that relatively old software on the PC side can use it. Depending on exactly what Sony's software division did to implement serial communication you may be ok. Most likely of all is that the handshake lines were not correctly emulated by the original USB dongle that you were trying to use. But it is important to set up the serial card as COM1, IRQ 4, 3F8 port address, and default to the baud rate specified in the manual for the PCLK. All the above settings were built into Windows and any computer that has a serial card on the motherboard, but may have to be specifically set on installation. In particular there is a tendency to allow higher baud (ie transmission) rates on newer equipment whereas there's a good chance that interface operates at 9600 baud. I'm not sure about the parity and stop bits, but these should be clearly specified somewhere in the manual. I would be inclined to try some other device out once you got it (and you could still try this with the existing setup) such as an external modem, to see if you can get some communication software to talk to that modem - thus proving you have the port correctly installed. Another thing would be to try to get said card to work on some other computer first - however of course the other machine will have a serial port already, so you won't be able to set the serial card to those settings if it does. Clear as mud?

Given your requirements (which are completely reasonable) the only thing the RH1 does for you that you cannot do any other way is perfect and fast upload of SP from MD to PC. That's worth having. The download (PC-RH1) isn't exactly transcoded twice. It's coded to LP2 and then the LP2 is blank-padded with 0 bits at the RH1 before writing to disk. You can do the optical in thing, and this should record perfect SP but I haven't tried it since there are so many ways to do that not involving the RH1 and I want to keep it for uploading the recordings I keep making on various units (eg MZ-R91 mono gives 160 mins for lecture presentations). Funny how Apple only dropped the DRM from Itunes only when they won the format war, isn't it?

finally we (I) got there... there is no serial port on your PC. I don't think you will do handshaking properly, as the software to control the MDS PC2 at some level *knows* about the serial port. So - I have read of the USB substitutes for serial port, but unless it emulates the ports that the software is expecting in *every* respect, I predict problems. I recall something of the kind with bluetooth that pretends to be serial port. At the very least you are going to have to run some very careful configuration on that "fake" (USB) serial port. Don't worry about the sound card part until you have that under control. Also running both the optical port and the control (serial) via USB may be asking for trouble - not sure there. I cannot believe that Vista of any flavour is incapable of recognising a real serial (COM) port. That must be just configuration. So I would try replacing one or if necessary both of these USB-based connecting devices, with the real McCoy, if you are able. Good luck!

I see what you mean, I got misled by the talk of USB. Sorry about that. The sound card driver software will have to "turn on" the Toslink i/o before anything can happen, is my belief. I am not sure how the computer interacts with the device if there's no USB connection. That's the part, that even with the manual open in front of me, I do not understand. The Control AII cable - exactly what is it supposed to plug into? And what software on the 'puter is supposed to drive it? If you can figure out how it used to work, the answers to those questions will have to be translated to your new machine. Was there an interface card supplied by Sony? Weird, the docs make no mention of RS232. (added) Ahhh it is starting to make some sense now. Your new computer has probably a 9-pin serial connector, whereas I am thinking maybe the old one had a 25-pin. There is always an issue of handshake lines. A "null modem no handshake" arrangement on the 9-pin is a bit different from that on the 25-pin, and an adapting connector may not relay the right pins properly. Am I getting close? You might want to try an external modem or other serial device on the serial port, whatever it is. My guess is that the software for MD hangs up waiting on the serial port for lack of communication.

Picture still a bit confused, is this a laptop or a desktop machine? Usually you can disable the sound card (I have done so in my Dell Dimension), and plug in a sound card with optical I/O. If a laptop you may be stuck with the external arrangement. The disablement has to be done in the ROM BIOS before the machine boots, though. Getting rid of the Windows devices is sorta irrelevant, as the install for whatever sound card you use will probably do that for you. Din unlock means the signal simply isn't being put out. You should see this without an error message though - when it's working the tip of the optical cable (output) will show red light That's a point - can you do INPUT via optical? Eg play something back and hear it on the PC speakers? That will be a function of the volume control for your sound card and will probably be mapped to something weird, as most people don't even try to do this. I'm also not sure what you mean by "cant get the MD editor to come up on screen". I cannot imagine trying to use anything except Sonic Stage (if only because it's the only thing I have ever used).

Don't take my literal word for it. But the outline of what you might be able to do is there, and the copying as Avrin describes may (or may not) be an essential step. What you probably *dont* want to do (before you get it working again) is to generate a backup (from the SS menu) as I think this overwrites what ever got saved before, and will only restore you to the messed up state you are in. (added) Sorry I read this this morning earlier before rushing out the door, and I missed that you totally reinstalled Windows. What I might do (if I had an extra machine) is to experiment with the whole thing on a setup on another computer before you try doing anything drastic like fixing registry entries. You won't be able to decrypt it as such, but you may (it sounds like you are fairly techie) be able to figure out what changes as you mess with the various pieces. Do you have a backup of Windows itself I wonder? I feel sure Sony has locked it to (all of) a. date/time b. some GUID in the Windows registry c. some specially generated keys that get updated each time you close SonicStage, Stephen

My fear is they are using something called perfect forward secrecy (google it) on the keys themselves. Hope not. But the keys are definitely time-sensitive. Any system restore may mess them up irreversibly. However I think I'm sure that when you restore the keys properly to time X, that the only .OMA files you will lose are the ones encrypted between X and now. However now you will want to get everything you can OUT (ie decrypted) because nothing new will work, if I recall correctly. A long dark tunnel. Step 1 - try to get your system to the point BEFORE that system restore. Then there is at least HOPE for the music before that restore point. You may have to revive the keys, so read everything posted by Avrin here in the last 6 months and try to understand what he says about the keys. I think they're in a hidden folder called OMGRIGHTS. Stephen

One thing that precludes that setup is a laptop. So this is useful info for people in that position, I think. Mind you the cost of a brand new Dell with most of the trimmings is around $350 and a soundcard can be had for $40.

Forget Sonic Stage - can you get access to Nero? Just burn them as an ordinary DATA CD-ROM if you can... the smarts are all in whatever player reads the CD. Good luck!

Quick scan through (and I wish I had one of these!) and I think the answer is probably the sound card. W98 support very spotty for USB. And if a rarity then probably not good drivers for XP etc. 64-bit Vista - most unlikely it will ever work, you're using technology that's 32-bit, from the 16-bit era almost. You may have to emulate 32-bits, or dualboot. However Windows 7 beta seems to work according to 1Kyle, but he wasn't trying anything unusual like your device. You don't say what software, are we talking SonicStage? You **do not want * the original SonicStage or worse still its predecessor. Get Sonic Stage 4.3 and see first if that's it. If not, I would be inclined to send off for a card that I knew works, the terratec Aureon 5.1 is good. I certainly had no luck at all hooking my JE-520 to a the Turtle Beach Montego, even though its predecessor the Santa Cruz worked fine. If you can't find easily, I can give you help when I get back later on. G'luck.

Very interesting...... Let me understand something - you are using USB out on the PC to drive the DM? That's amazing, in this day of overcapacity, overspeed and bloatware. Stephen

I'm definitely interested - however currently seem to have exhausted my appetite for "new" units. Cheers Stephen

Your last statement is only true for files imported from CD WHEN the import format is specified as WAV. Maybe you forgot this. I never knew it... thanks. I've actually taken to importing CD's in Atrac Advanced Lossless, it seems to work quite smoothly and is not encumbered by the OpenMG nonsense where the encryption keys get lost on System Restore. Also saves 50% space on disk, and just as Sony claims, it seems to be (at least approximately) lossless (don't lets get into religion here, guys). However the previous comments about needing to decrypt PCM are indeed true, when the PCM is uploaded from a recording on MD (eg microphone). In this case I title them(either on MD or on PC), export as WAV and now delete from SS and reimport as WAV. This guarantees no further mucking about with the sound and no chance that a crash of SS will lose them for me.

The other point about SP is that it *is* an archive format. You need a deck or an RH1 to get stuff out but eventually you can. LP2 is lossy and you really really don't want to save things in that format. So your decision makes sense. The other clue I got was that LP2 recorded on HiMD format doesn't seem to have Type-S enhancement (based on my ears at least).