sfbp

"it sounded fine" doesn't help much. What I want to know is, did the output pins on the MD deck have a good signal in pass-through mode?

Playback of prerecorded is irrelevant. They use a completely different mechanism of data storage - in fact just like a CD, it is 100% optical. Whereas the recordable disks are magneto-optical. You can put that model into DAC mode, right, by pressing record with no disk in? Can you confirm that the sound you are sending to the record input makes it out the other side to the RCA output jacks? If not, I am suspicious of the signal you are feeding to the unit in the first place.

Given the date of the software, I think it's rather unlikely. Most improvements in MP3 (which at low data rates is still a dreadful codec, above 256kbps it's not bad) have come in the last 15 years, i.e. after what ever this guy did back in 2003. And that includes converting MP3 to other things. For example if your MP3s are variable bit rate, I wonder if his software (even if you can get it) would even process them? MDS-PC3 does not speak NetMD, I don't understand your last sentence at all. Ah - perhaps you are saying that NetMD-USB would be a good alternative to Optical S/PDIF? I wouldn't bother. If I was converting MP3s to MD, I would use Sound Forge. This generally "gets it right" when remastering the sound to a different codec and different bit rate. It even has an option to generate NetMD directly, although I think you would be much better off with Hi-MD and converting to one of those codecs. I totally understand that Hi-MD may not be an option if you need your portable player to be "legacy" minidisc. The one step I question is "normalizing". Results in my hands have been very random - all it takes is one glitch (eg scratch on an LP) and the entire waveform is reduced accordingly.

Why? What do you need to do with it that you cannot do any other way?

That link must be almost 20 years old. I'm sure it and the author are long gone. You would probably do better looking for the author by conventional means, such as directories of real names. Good luck!

It cannot be the belts at fault. Something systemic is causing all your mechanisms to be extra sticky. Congealed grease maybe? Looks like I was wrong about belts being "it", my apologies.

Agreed. Sony came up with special Mac versions for some of the later Hi-MD machines but it was always a bit hit-and-miss; MDs are mostly-PC-oriented devices.

When you have eliminated...... What's the (congealed) grease situation? Something stopping motion maybe.....

The thing about grease is you need to clean off what's there before putting fresh grease. AND it must be exactly the right kind (it's white but that's about all I know). Maybe someone can post information about the appropriate kind of grease. This is likely the biggest reason for C13 except for busted laser.

You have to be able to permit USB events from the minidisc to be forwarded to Windows XP. I have no idea how this happens on Macs. I'd be inclined to believe it if someone told me it simply cannot be done. At the very least it will depend on whether the Mac in question supports SLAT (Second Level Address Translation). With Virtual XP running on top of Windows 7 or 10, for example, the virtual machine gives me the chance to connect the "stub driver" in Windows 64 to communicate with the device and then the 32-bit USB driver that comes with the MD unit(s). This works for M-Crew and the PCLK-MN10 as well, and is a general method. However, I would be more inclined to see about a REAL version of Windows on your Mac. I have no idea how this is done, but I believe there is something called "Parallels" for some versions of the Mac, especially the ones built around Intel chips (see how ignorant I am!?). In this case, the only problem is likely to be that as most modern versions of Windows are 64-bits (c'mon someone, tell me I'm talking rubbish) you need the 64-bit USB driver for NetMD. If you had a HiMD unit, life might be a lot simpler, as no drivers are required to connect Sonic Stage to your MD (at least in HiMD mode). You could then tackle the issue of the NetMD driver (which we have here but which has to be loaded and takes a few tricks to do so) after you got the basic set up working. I know this much, I have put Sonic Stage onto someone in my family's Mac, and the non-MD part of it worked just fine. This might be better than trying to connect your unit to a 32-bit version of Windows (good idea you had, though). Hope this helps.

Let your fingers do the walking - took me 30 seconds with google: 1. Press HOLD to put the player in hold mode. 2. Hold down LINK and press in order UP, DOWN, OPTION, UP, DOWN, RIGHT, LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT, LEFT, PLAY/PAUSE, OPTION. 3. Press HOLD to turn hold off. You will now be in test mode. 4. Press RIGHT to display menu items 5. Press UP/DOWN until you get to �OTHERS� 6. Press RIGHT to display next menu. 7. Press UP/DOWN until you get to �SP SET� 8. Press PLAY/PAUSE, �ON/OFF� is displayed. 9. Press OPTION, �ON/OFF� will be selected. 10. Press PLAY/PAUSE and it will be entered. 11. Exit play mode by pressing and holding BACK for more than a few seconds, release, and then turn the player off. https://www.avforums.com/threads/sony-nw-a1000-nw-a3000-eu-volume-limit-unlock.283760/

Sorry,. that makes no sense at all. Something that is working wasn't working before. There is no way that pushing eject would not trigger a TOC write. Conclusion: your MZ-R700 is dangerously close to being out of alignment and may fail at any time. It may even have a blown overwrite head.

Try turning it on in service mode. Usually (better read manual) this means plugging in to wall whilst holding in AMS knob. This happened to me once. Also, be sure the timer switch is set correctly (to ON). Last resort (my solution in practice) start taking it apart, disconnect and reconnect the various modules (display, disk etc). You may well frighten it into submission.

IT CANNOT BE DONE. The HiMD chip doesn't have the outputs. It doesn't need to be done, either. Simply play back the files with a nice computer (the player is little more than a fancy D-to-A) either where they sit (on the HiMD) or after they've been uploaded to the PC. There's no data conversion, therefore no data loss. If your MD data is legacy, then use one of the older decks to get S/PDIF out.

Unless you have the Japanese (domestic) version, most of the regular decks will not work with PCLK/PS2. They're all set up for keyboard only, and several of us have tried to tweak some models without success. Sorry! The decks and combinations and bookshelf units known to work with PCLK (10 or 20 doesn't matter) are: Simple decks (all versions): MDS-PC3 MDS-JE770 Deck via USB direct (no PCLK): MDS-JE780 MDS-JB980 CD-MD decks: MXD-D40 Bookshelf: CMT-PX3/5/7 (the PX3 was sold as DHC-MD595) CMT-SE9* CMT-M100MD CHC-CL5MD CMT-CP500MD Bookshelf via USB direct (no PCLK needed): CMT-M373NT/M333NT* * indicates special version of MCrew needed In addition there's a DVD bookshelf (horrible because the DVDs it plays are very restricted in many ways), and the Japanese versions of: MDS-JB940 MXD-D5C ? MDS-JE640 JBS-920/30 and most other models predate the PS/2 MCrew interface and do not support it even when there is a keyboard port (eg MDS-JE530/630). There are some other odd models that almost nobody seems to have such as MDS-DAV1 and MDS-S500 - status unknown (at least by myself). Hope this helps!

Huh? There are a couple of downloads here. On this site. What matters is: what MD unit are you connecting to?

They need to be really tight. If there is any slack, the belt has already stretched beyond what will work. Yes, it's possible the mechanism is sticking (broken tooth in the rack), but it's not nearly as likely as the belt. Another thing - there is NO WAY all three would fail with a broken tooth - it's an extreme event. Whereas all three belts going slack is EXTREMELY likely.

BELT! Item 204 on the service manual for the e10 which is all I had handy. Probably the same or similar for the E12. It's basically a rubber band. The favourite replacement is an orthdontic one which you can buy in bags of 100. Do some reading here - there are lots of posts about this for other machines. It's the single commonest source of this problem for ALL decks.

MDLP recordings (as opposed to USB transfers/rips) are cool. it's a better codec than SP. The only licensing issue (and this is not 100% clear whether it was technically deprecated or because of serious legal language with Dolby) was not storing the "raw" ATRAC data from SP on disk. Make sure you follow the steps of removing other drivers when uploading from RH1. If upload goes at full speed (about 10 minutes for a disk regardless of recording speed) then you don't have the problem, which is known to occur when heterogeneous MD unIts have been hooked to a W32 system, triggering installation of the "vampire" drivers which interfere with legacy upload on RH1.

if the entire hd got encrypted by that password, this is by design, so that new owner doesn't get private stuff from old owner if you inherited it from someone you know, ask them you can try taking out the CMOS (usually CR2032) battery and removing all mains and battery power from the machine overnight this is emphatically NOT a Vaio service forum. you need to ask this question of a trained Sony employee, sorry.

i would strongly recommmend brand new. The problem is that SonicStage frequently hangs up when you first connect a 1GB disk which has been erased. if there's nothing wrong with the player then it's fine but it can easily get into a vicious circle. Erasing it with one of the HiMD decks works, but most don't have access to one. Sonic Stage tries very hard to recover track rights even from a formatted disk. Once you have one set aside for this purpose then you can do any number of alignments. That's not much comfort.....

NetMD recordings (LP2/3/4) cannot be transferred. However MDLP recordings (from any unit, not restricted) that were NOT made via USB are bit-for-bit and there are no settings to make. Note that you will wish to decrypt everything after the upload using the File Conversion Tool. That it worked will be indicated by file extension changed from .oma to .OMA. If you don't do this, files are locked to that installation of SonicStage on that PC. SP pretty much same but in my experience there is no advantage in generating WAV files... better to go with 256k Atrac3+ (only 2 options for upload). You lose the metadata when you make wav files and it all gets v confusing trying to deal with the generated files. Ignore the stuff about "fake SP" that's in the other direction ie PC->MD. If you DO get locked out of the files, VLC ( and also ffmpeg) will work on them even with encryption. The hiMD transfer stuff was a bug in the freeware Qhimdtransfer program that they never solved, about music tracks starting somewhere other than on a FAT boundary. The VLC/ffmpeg and Sonic Stage handle it perfectly, no need to worry about getting rid of track marks. Good question, i can tell you've already read around a bit. I would NOT alter discs to be uploaded at this stage. Rather, get yourself a copy of Sound Forge and edit the uploaded files (you will have to decrypt them first). IF you have a lot of tracks it becomes wise to edit the titles before upload.. or you'll get buried in files with weird titles. One more thing. You cannot write protect a HiMD recording before upload. Legacy MD you can and should. Since a one bit error in HiMD invalidates the whole disk, be careful and don't interrupt or crash!!!!

That's exactly why I'm telling you now. By the time you've got them i should be able to help better.

Sorry I'm not at home right now or i could walk you through it mean time you will need three things: 1. A CD minidisc (prerecorded from a commercial manufacturer). Doesn't matter what music 2. A completely full nornal minidisc. The best is to record 80 minutes of anything and then (i honestly don't remember why) clone it to be a single track of LP4 (5 HRS 23 MINUTES). 3. A blank 1GB minidisc (brand new if humanly possible). I seem to recall it may also help to have an 80minute disk formatted to HiMD. This will help at some point, and you should also have a blank ordinary MD on hand. It may not be so easy if you don't have any other MD machines. Can't do much more now. There are some tricks but really you do have to align first to the CD. Also a regulated power supply (maybe you can borrow one). To keep power supplied in service mode i strongly suggest BOTH the 3V adapter AND a brand new alkaline (1.7V ie not rechargeable of any kind). RPS are expensive, usually a few hundred bucks. We can continue this in 10 days but that's all i have for now. kind regards

pretty much ffmpeg reads saved, encrypted ATRAC files and vlc plays them you can search for "Marc's hi-md renderer" too the linux-minidisc# (sorry #linux-minidisc) project did what you probably want and is dead too