sfbp

Good to see you back. Verrrry interesting!!!! (yup I tried the simple experiment now) So it follows that when SS copies files to the MD directory it does so using some special undocumented call. Maybe even some encryption keys, but something has to be able to decode those, and the resultant disk is playable anywhere, right? So: either the driver needs a magic password, or every SS-created disk has something in it that every single MD firmware ever created must know about. Right? Stephen

First off, I'm not sure which legislation you are referring to. As an American, the Canadian legislation doesn't affect you unless you cross our borders. Assuming you mean the Canadian Bill C-61 (replacing the in-force C-60 which has the levy provision as a way of distributing some money to struggling Canadian artists), it's far from passed. There has been uproar here. I personally think that we should be getting excited about what's going on in Zimbabwe, or in pre-Olympic China, or Darfur, Afghanistan or any number of places, but that's my personal position. Second off, I think the legislation here has been introduced under incredible pressure from the US music and movie lobby amid all sorts of veiled government threats about losing NAFTA, and making it more difficult for traffic (tourists, truckers and all) to flow in either direction. After all, we are the USA's #1 business partner, and vice-versa. I think (personal unsubstantiated opinion follows) the drafters of the legislation knew the public (and the parliamentarians who represent it) wouldn't stand for it, and largely followed the US model knowing said legislation will fail, so that they can say "we tried". Informed academic opinion (law professors etc) is firmly against the bill and firmly in favour of the status quo, or perhaps other measures. Third off (and this is where the lobbying efforts sometimes bear fruit) there have been all sorts of trumpetings about Canada being the source of all piracy owing to some petty crooks stealing bad copies of movies with a camcorder, whereas in reality, the numbers are but a drop in the bucket, and may even serve to popularize the pirated movie(s). I don't have the reference to hand. So all in all, yes it's absurd to make it illegal to: a. own and operate a "foreign" DVD player b. rip tracks onto CD (but not sell them, that part is "not cricket" as far as I am concerned and the law agrees) c. time-shift/archive/mediaconvert material that you own or (under the current laws) have the right to access. Finally the (Canadian) Government has assured us that it will not itself get involved in prosecution of malefactors under the new highly restrictive provisions. Since the Govt operates our borders, I see no way that anything like the "IPod Police" could get to be. However I can easily see it at airports going into US customs - the INS/DHS guys enforce far more laws on those rash enough to want to enter the USA than they ever enforce on their own citizens. And in the US there is a much closer link between big corporations and Government. All in all I agree with everything you say about the RIAA/MPAA and their efforts to force this kind of corporate silliness down the throats of Canadian consumers. Bobt, don't worry. The earliest any of this might happen in Canada is November, I think. Meantime I plan to spend some effort opposing the internet throttling that's happening in Ontario. As a software author, I am not in favour of (99% illegal) peer to peer sharing of unlimited content (software, music, video) that triggered this brownout. But dragging the whole internet down and checking every packet to try and shut down specific illegal applications will probably never work. And I applaud the decision to attempt to place curbs on oil speculation, which some folks have now admitted what I guessed a month ago, is mainly responsible for the cries of "Peak Oil". Wow, we are getting a long way from MD. Time to pull back.... Stephen

Not Hi-MD but perhaps you are unaware of the pro line from HHB http://www.minidisc-canada.com/shopexd.asp?id=357 Cheers

http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=21145 I would be inclined to install Nero, rather than Roxio, before SS. But either might work. I recently found a nasty problem with Windows recognizing CDs but not DVDs on one machine. Turned out to be hardware, because the CD and DVD functions use 2 different lasers, and only one was broken. At the current drive prices the easiest was to replace the drive. No reason to suppose that this might be your problem, however I imagine it's just possible you have a drive that reads DVD but not CD. Take a look here, also http://forums.support.roxio.com/index.php?showtopic=20482 If you can read CDs and or DVDs but not write one or other, the problem is more likely to be to do with the UDF reader. That's the driver component that allows raw access to an unformatted, writeable disk. This is just from poking around on the internet, but I think it's possible that the file PxHelp20.sys may be at the root of all these problems, assuming your hardware is ok. Hope this helps. Attached to this post is a driver list of one of my drives. This happens to be DVD and CD read, CD-only writer. See if your driver list looks like this.

Try this then Here lieth the cable you need Stephen added later: BTW the cable looks a lot like a standard cable with the same largest size USB connector at both ends. Perhaps someone can confirm or deny this.

Sorry, didn't realise it was different. Just out of curiosity, what's different about it? Form factor or electrical connections?

try here (search ebay worldwide for minidisc, there are probably more) A random listing on ebay In particular, buy any old NetMD and you will get one. Good luck!

I'm actually of the opinion that any such law is simply un-implementable. But border guards (you would know this if you were a Canadian who had visited the USA) have unlimited power. All it takes is some directive from Washington (or Ottawa) and you're screwed. Try taking fruit back from Canada in the summer. I almost didn't make it to Disneyland with my kids.

The border guards might think you are from Mission Impossible, but apart from that, what can they do except confiscate the disk? I agree that CD's in one's car might well be subject to scrutiny. Now books, there's an interesting topic. Did you know that the big textbook publishers have special editions that they publish only in poor countries? (you can buy one online and get it by mail for 1/10 the price here). I'm sure that the said publishers would love the border guards to confiscate them. But would they? Any more than they would confiscate music???? Yes, I think 40c is cheap for a recordable CD.

One of the things that does upset me about much of the legislation being enacted around the world (I understand it is already in force in Britain, and for sure in the USA) is that it will be illegal to encrypt anything without giving the Government access to it. I realise that there are reasons to prevent the "bad guys" from being able to commit treason in secret, but gun controls never stopped felons from acquiring guns. Suggestions have been made that DES encryption is steganographic (ie the US Govt could always decode it, though noone is quite sure how), which is why AES was supposed to replace it. Security by keeping the algorithm secret is generally frowned upon in computer circles because sooner or later the secret gets out. This was the basis of the design and selection of AES as the new standard for encryption. Mind you, if it ever gets to the point that they confiscate a MD because they cannot determine what's on it, that would be the time to stop travelling.

You are exactly correct, you must press the record button. I think this feature is in common in every single portable MD recorder made by Sony. The saved settings of the RH1 make it quite nice that you don't have to preset anything else. Also if you don't need PCM, there is so much space on each disk that it's rare you need to press the record button very often. You can even press it before you arrive at the venue A tip, set automatic track marking on (my preference is 10 minutes). This will enable you to easily discard the sections you didn't care about, and find your way through the ones that you want. Welcome to MDCF!

I re-read your post just now. As I said, I seem very slow today (must be the weather, we are all lounging around as if we don't know what hit us), but I don't quite see how you answered either of my points. Sure I can transfer to a MD with optical in, making tracks that are not restricted. I do that anyway because most of my tracks are things which I recorded using the analog input of MD deck, off LP, reel-to-reel, or Cassette. So I don't really view the SS library as anything more than a slightly convenient organiser which could disappear at any time and I wouldn't lose sleep. What I really want to know is a. how to add files to the MD over the USB (in HiMD, since the files are just visible and presumably I ought to be able to zap the entire contents back and forth). I havent actually tried this yet. But seems like I should be able to pull all the files off one HiMD, and substitute another set (with different music) using ONLY Windows explorer. I suppose you're going to tell me those files are useless except on that particular disk.... sigh, if so. b. how to move files to the MD over USB without using SS, for the NON-HiMD. I don't care about what NetMD does to them, unless there's a way to get them there unencrypted (same as when I record directly onto LP2 deck). Maybe that's the Rosetta Stone, getting them across USB without Sony's restrictions, but faster than x1. c. How to make (and play back) an Atrac CD or image without having an Atrac player. I.e. can I make an image of an atrac cd and mount it using Nero DriveImage, and simulate the MD? This might be a way of backup painlessly whilst still having the majority of the library directly on some physical MD.

I thought that simply running the Sony-supplied conversion would produce OMA files with no encryption. It was recommended by someone here a long time ago, and I did it, then setting SS not to do the encryption. I don't recall the details exactly.

I agree that the SS library is inflexible (you cannot easily move it, as far as I can see). I always export everything (that SS imports FROM the MD) to WAV that doesn't come from a commercial CD that I already owned. So the only reason for having the SS database is to do the export. As I say, I should be really interested to be able to transfer straight to the HiMD files that are visible from Windows. However this doesn't deal with NetMD.

The one which amazes me is CD-R Audio. I first encountered this concept about a month ago where a very serious gentleman of my acquaintance insisted that they are necessary (at least in his CD-recorder that's not part of a computer). So they tax these disks after deliberately making them different. This is sorta like the Italian government (and I dare say others since) putting a dye in fuel obtained using petrol coupons so that it would be illegal for non-tourists to have dyed fuel (much cheaper) in their cars. Shocking. Unless there really is some technical merit, all they would seem to have achieved is to ensure CD (music) recorders don't sell. I just got back from the grocery store. $19.99 (+ 12% tax) for a spindle of 50. So the levy (21c) is a little bit over half. Certainly not expensive enough for me to complain.

Funny you should ask that. Yes. But I went a very funny way around it. They were willing to have FedEx (or presumably any other courier) pick it up from their warehouse. But the cost was going to be $165. Ouch! So I found myself an Aussie friend willing to take delivery and throw away the charger (useless here), and he came to the US and sent by FedEx second day here. Cleared nicely. So my shipping cost was (apart from the friendship cost!) $30 plus $18 customs clearance including GST/PST and $7 fee. Way better than UPS, for sure. BTW, I think the guy purporting to sell this unit (Ebay) in the USA is selling NH600D's (ie not this unit). I never got an answer from him, so won't deal with someone who doesn't reply to questions.

Presumably,we all want to be able to manipulate the data files on a HiMD with something other than SS. I'm feeling particularly dense this morning... please could one of you two explain again how to get things onto MD without using SS? I'm sure the idea would leap out at me if I kept rereading it. I do have Nero and all the tools there, I think. Maybe I'm completely missing the point of what you want to do. I've never actually tried to put MP3 onto MD as I don't particularly need to - the only MP3 tracks I have were converted from WAV files using Nero or Sony's converter. Also most units don't play them back, so I avoided for compatibility reasons. Perhaps you could enlighten me - I thought SB did the transfer track by track. Or is it as simple as building a data image and using Windows Explorer to copy the files over?

Yeah. Except I couldn't see anything of that kind, and it still whistled (or shimmied, or whatever verb you will) after I failed to observe anything like that.

I think some people must rather abuse their equipment. In fact in a post today, someone admitted as how they did that, and how the player came through anyway. Nearly all mine is second hand, and I only had one failure, ever, and from reading on here, I realise now, what I might well have done to recover from *that*. One thing to bear in mind is that PCM uses a lot more disk access, therefore power, and also mechanical wear on the moving parts of the player, than the compressed formats. It's also fairly clear from sound tests that SP, Hi-SP and PCM have not that much to choose from, unless you are recording something that ought to be done with a bank of mixers and 20 mikes. Hi-SP uploads easier to computer (faster, no losses?) than SP (forget LP if you care about quality for making your own recordings). SP is fine via optical out from a deck, but no portable players left have optical, and no deck has HiMD (except a couple that don't have optical out OR USB). That's one reason to stick with SP, and gives you that much more redundancy since every MD device made supports SP.

I said nothing about "getting by" the trade agreement. I was assuming that some jerk who didn't know what he was doing might start inspecting every piece of electronics (much like they make us take our shoes off in US airports). I was further suggesting there was nothing that I might have that could be confiscated except the media, provided I stick to MD. I am not proud. Nothing to be proud of. Or ashamed of. I have no idea what you're talking about "fooling airport security". This is a matter of international borders and contraband. Perhaps you have never crossed into another country by presenting your passport? It has nothing whatsoever to do with "airport security".

I wasn't discussing the legislation. You were.

You can't use Spinrite on your Ipod. Or any other portable device with a hard disk. Sure, you need to back up your hard drive. But I trust MD more than I trust a memory stick. I heard some rumours that indicate MD might last a long time because of certain organisations (eg NPR) having contracts. So as long as they are being manufactured you've got a finite time to move away from MD.

Weird, I found so many different accounts of what the levy is that I don't believe any of them. I know it *used* to be 21c per cd. I'm pretty sure it has been adjusted, probably to tax CD's and cassettes less, and DVD's more. But no luck digging this up (yet). I found references to .25c, 21c, 67c, who knows??? What I do know that currently any of these except the first would exceed the cost of CDRs that I can buy in the supermarket. Edit: looks like 21c but no reference to the other media (DVD, MD). So at least here it doesn't seem that onerous. One time I went down and bought some in the USA but the real price included a refund from the "fulfilment house" (a euphemism, as their job is to get out of paying up on any grounds whatever), and they simply didn't even respond telling me I wasn't eligible. So in the end more expensive than here. I'll check the next time we go grocery shopping and post the result.

Sure. But if you've ever tangled with some of the numnuts who police the various borders, you wouldn't want to experiment. My only point is, wouldn't it be nice to say "here's a disc, you can have it if you insist, there's no music on the device"?

Thanks I do recall hearing something rattle when I shook it. Sounded like it wasn't coming from the disk drive itself but from the back corner where the power supply is. I'm now reluctant to see if the rattle has gone, for obvious reasons!