sfbp

L and R - are those the direction of "increase" when turned?

Well that works for me (no speakers). More to the point is there's no sign of the interconnect cable in the photos. So you guys may have to help me make one if it doesn't turn up.

Sigh, I found the reason I couldn't see any for sale. They got listed as HMC-PX7. Amazingly there were two listed on Yahoo Japan, I bought one buy-it-now for $50 or so. The killer will be the shipping, I shall have to negotiate with Buyee and see if they will throw away the speakers and save me the cost of that, if it makes a huge difference.

I am quite intrigued by the specifications of the CMT-PX7. Has anyone ever seen one of these? It has a 3-CD changer and a 3-MD changer. I know that its little brother the CMT-PX3 (I have 2, one in England I am still looking to unload) is one of the most reliable units I've ever seen. Both machines have MDLP (CXD2662 or equivalent). There is also a PX5 - there's one on Yahoo Japan - with 3CD and 1MD which is less interesting to me. The PX7 is claimed to be usb-controllable, but the manual I found shows a PS/2 socket just as I would expect from that era, instead of USB. Intriguingly the PX3 was sold under the moniker DHC-595MD - weird eh? So perhaps the PX7 has another name???? Inquiring minds, dontcha know?

That would be brilliant. You can look at the inf file(s) for the "everything" netMD here that I made - they've been installed thousands of times. I just did exactly what you said, modified it so it installs for everything. Signing is another matter, but you've already got that under control.

I am about 99% certain I've seen the Sony device "connected" in some Windows configuration/status display (once Sonic Stage starts then I agree it disappears). So I wonder if it simply needs a key...... but no idea how that would work in practice. The Sony driver for 64 bits works reliably for all NetMD, the only problem is installing it, which problem has been solved for quite a while.

Very interesting. thanks for the clarification. I've certainly seen performance problems on time-sensitive (and interrupt-dependent) software designed for 32-bit windows running on a 64-bit box. So it didn't seem much of a stretch (to imagine the main barrier being 64 vs 32 bits). I wonder what exactly Sony did (yeah I know, they got over-the-top paranoid at one point)? Or does this approach completely bypass Sony's driver?

Quick question: (and very happy you did all this for NetMD owners) Your mention of Zadig is entirely due to the need to use 64 bit windows, right? So anyone misguided enough to install a 32-bit windows doesn't have to use it, and can therefore do all the download/upload stuff on that (32-bit) machine without installing anything. Or am I missing something else? Sadly virtual 32-bits doesn't work all that well for time-sensitive things like sound transfer over USB. Virtual PC supports drivers similar to what Zadig does, I have been running M-Crew on XP mode on Virtual PC. The only problem there is that the CD support fails, sigh.

Might depend on your internet configuration. Mine is always playing up because it switches all the time. In this case you may need to "C:\>IPCONFIG /FLUSHDNS" (the prompt and the quotes are illustrative and not meant to be entered by you)

Do you need the SM?

Byrdle is a-mus-ing in that the guesses don't have to be musical words. But the answer always is. Sometimes it's only 5 letters instead of 6.

Just to cheer you up here is the first of three pages of Viola jokes: https://www.mit.edu/~jcb/viola-jokes.html and while we're about it has anyone discovered Byrdle? The reason this came to mind is that my starting guess is always V-I-O-L-A-S (lots of vowels). Happy New Year to one and all. Does anyone have experience of converting a live windoze boot disk to GPT (after i discovered i cannot use the rest of the drive, period)? It's good to be back.

Not a word from Rick, sadly. Maybe he came back in one of those extended down periods.....

I bow to your electronics knowledge. I do remember Jim explaining how the various different versions of (at least) the PX3 were only separated by something he called a "backstrap" - the idea being that to get to/from 100V/120V there was a sort of feedback loop where some (7% IIRC) of the (transformed) voltage is either added or subtracted to the AC before conversion to DC. In the confined space of the bookshelf models perhaps this makes more difference but I definitely remember both the drive and MDs removed from it getting warm as a sign that the drive was about to fail. You're right, it could be coincidence but ever since I have made sure to run 100V models on one of the transformers (rather than attempting to modify the circuit since we never have succeeded in finding any Japanese-language service manuals at all that definitively show the internal arrangement) intended for Japanese-market products. Snake oil? Perhaps but I don't think so and there are those here who may have experience with the 100V converters. Sounds quite reasonable to me that a misadjusted MD laser mechanism might be a sort of heating feedback loop that cooked the device (slowly).

Well I definitely saw overheating on my 100V (Japan model) CMT-PX3 which has an MDM-7X2A, when plugged into 120V. When it (the drive not the whole machine) came back from Jim, I made sure to get a 100V converter and it's worked a treat ever since. I know there can be variations in mains voltages, when I was at school we had our own generator and my Tandberg tape deck just about died when the voltage went to 190V on a Sunday afternoon (everyone was trying to use electrical power).

Not meaning to sidetrack the conversation but jumping in here - "temperamental" can come from over heating. Overheating can come from incorrect adjustment. "just" (how I hate that word) a thought.

Check voltage rail?

This sounds like one for Kevin. The service manual is here. Be careful!

Exactly which MD player do you have? Most of them do not play MP3 very well. The exception is the MZ-RH1 (same is MZ-M200) and possibly the MZ-DH710. The DH710 looks like it is the last model Sony designed and marketed and therefore may have the improvements in sound quality as the MZ-RH1. Even then I'm not sure it is any better than the other "second generation" MD players such as MZ-RH10/910 and the various player-only models. On those (second-generation) devices, the direct MP3 support is not considered to be very good. So your best bet is conversion of MP3 to the highest rate intermediate format you can find. The free Sony-supplied MP3ConversionTool is my recommendation for this. Do not go via WAV files using a converter, you will likely get horrible sound. If you have a really good OTHER system that plays MP3s you might try playing those back into a Sony device, but all the usual warnings (caveats) apply such as getting gold-plated analog cables (of course if your source system playing the MP3 will somehow play S/PDIF digital, then you're laughing). Another relatively reliable way of conversion from (and to) MP3 is Sound Forge 9 or later. This comes bundled with a lot of digital players by Sony, and is part of Sony Studio Platinum (I may have got the name wrong). You can play around with lots of options and try to get the best sound balance. It doesn't work in batch mode, but there is a (very expensive) Pro version that (allegedly) does this in an automated way. Stephen

'Tis a testament to the durability of (most) minidiscs that there aren't enough to act as coasters. I know that used to be the epithet of choice for a dead "floppy" disk (of course they weren't floppy once the size was about the same as MD).

Those TDKs are among my absolute favourites.

I was wondering if they had discovered perpetual motion, actually...... but didn't want to spoil things by my scepticism. Bought some HQRP (not labelled 3000mAh) a while back and they seemed to be ok but not DOUBLE the capacity. Beware purveyors of snake oil, I guess.

Hi guys You may see this behaviour with a lot of sites, as this is what you may observe in the event that SIF changes its address whilst you are browsing or between visits (the second of which you attempt to resume earler acivity). I've been seeing it a lot lately with things like eBay, paypal. I think (but not sure) that this is a consequence of sites being in the cloud. Not sure how some DNS get around this; in my case it's clear that my own local DNS server doesn't signal my browser of the change, so I end up doing "ipconfig /flushdns".

I bet y'all forgot about this My original plan was to get the MDM7 fixed myself (the usual belt problem but I verified that it plays and records MDs just fine), but it looks like I won't make it to Sunny Surrey until at least September. It's way too heavy and too much of a nuisance to be posted, but if you UK-resident MD gurus want it, it could be picked up. I saw it and it's in better condition than the unit I have here at home (which is incidentally a JPN version). The CD was very slow to play but it was stored somewhere quite cold and I bet just taking inside would make quite a difference. It even has the tape deck that goes with it, TX-MD595, complete with the interface box. Currently we don't know where the remote is. But it's pretty clean, and apart from the belt and/or possible CD issues (I was able to play a CD after it warmed up), is in excellent shape. (*Note: there's also an MDS-S707 which I didn't think was of any particular interest. But the speakers and tape deck go with the main unit, they should stick together, I think).

Yeah, it's dated to expire on something like 31/Oct if you take a look. There must be a setting......... https://www.technipages.com/google-chrome-bypass-your-connection-is-not-private-message