sfbp

BE VERY CAREFUL! Nearly all of Sony's decks were made with 3.3V LED's. However 3.3V diodes are essentially unavailable these days. This is good news and bad news. The good news is you can get 5V diodes very cheaply (from Mouser or other suppliers). The bad news is they need a 5V rail (power supply). In most cases this is not a problem because it's not so hard to find 5V (eg CN103). I think if you plug a 3.3V diode to a 5V rail you may get premature death. If you plug a 5V diode into 3.3V it may not work properly. Since this is the most critical path for your precious sound, you would be well advised to consider the problem very carefully. For example there's a REG.+5V and an H.+5V and an M.+5V. If you know what these all mean, then good luck.

Old version.

Right, so it respects the TrProtect flags as do all firmwares since the invention of NetMD. The ones which don't were generally built before that.

You need ffmpeg. It works fine on everything except advanced lossless (AAL). You've run into the problem that Sony helped (on purpose) to create by making it impossible to move files, thereby (it hoped) preventing copying of music you don't really own a license to. There are ways to revive that lot in Sonic Stage. Others will tell you how. But if you don't have ANY files from your old machine saved (apart from the sound files themselves) you are stuck with ffmpeg. Which is an amazingly good option compared to a year or two ago (see my post in Announcements). It even supports command line processing, so is perfect for batch jobs. good luck

Very nice. I think that this shows that under certain circumstances the sensing/sensed voltages by the charging circuit start to mess up. I had something similar with my smartphone recently - if it takes longer than usual to charge it is a very good sign, namely the battery is magically coming back to(wards) capacity.

Yeah these are buy it now auctions. There's only one problem (I bought 2 and they work perfectly). Buyee is not allowed to ship by regular mail. They have to use UPS which is expen$ive.

And.... indeed, into the version of VLC for Android phones! Amazing, now I can copy .oma files straight onto my generic Android device and play them. Probably not as good as Sony's Walkmen, but certainly convenient. Is the real end of the minidisc, I ask myself?

Jim told me that fixing the RH1 was the worst project he ever had. Firstly HiMD machines are finicky (he and I worked on a pair of RH910's for a whole year so you probably need to be patient). Secondly the RH1 is flimsy in a way that few earlier models are. Exceptions (ie also bad): MZ-E10, MDS-JE510, LAM-X1. Sorry

No. But you could simply measure the signal level from line out and duplicate that with the remote. The passage through the remote should be clean. For analog signals I'm pretty sure it's 30. For digital it may be (according to a former regular contributor) 23. But your problem is analog.

Punkt kontra Punkt: Philippe vs Philippe, how amusing!!!!!!!!!! I agree with b, C. The RH1 does work without a battery. I've tried it, you can upload stuff running purely on the USB. Not too long to fulfil that dream

I think he's already left, Philippe, and I'm sure he's in Australia when home.

Better I start with just the 980. Especially since it matches the 980 I have. Post from Germany is not too bad. If you're going to be gone from Oz a long time, take it with you (just the mech) and send from Germany? We can sort out addresses via PM here, as long as you can login to this board. On rereading the whole thread, punkrock (he's in Germany, you know) might be exactly right. Mechanical, if the open/close thing was the problem from the start. If it(the error)'s really mechanical, Jim may be the best option. You could post it to Yorkshire (England!) from Germany also. He's rather slow as he has had health problems. But every time I exchange emails with him, he mentions that he's been steadily working through a pile of jobs. Stephen

Not a chance, you MUST do an alignment now, almost certainly. It's possible that setting the state byte to FF may do it (1931?) but I wouldn't want to warranty the results myself.

Agreed on all counts. I'll volunteer (as long as you pay the postage to/from Oz, not cheap), as I even have a 980 to slot it into. We can talk about settlement in kind if and only if I succeed in fixing it. Likely no parts involved. Stephen

Is it possible these disks were made (recorded by you) at a certain period together and that they, not the machine are actually the problem? The fact that the tdys-1 disk works might suggest this. Did you try changing iop by a single notch? In each direction... It does sound as if something was up already leading to you hitting the machine.

Probably the most versatile and reliable (except for the player-only ones) himd unit. Good choice!

This is exhibiting the behaviour I have seen when a deck is one click (of the IOP value) away from perfectly adjusted. Try really powering it off, i.e. not standby. Sounds like maybe your jolting it needs the servo to be reset. Perhaps you have artificially aged the laser. Are disks coming out warm just from playing (not a good sign)? Can you see or hear vibration from side to side when a disk is correctly playing? (you'll need the disk apart but still functional to see this). If no luck with removing power, check the IOP value is the one written on the Optical Pickup (OP in these manuals), see page 29. With luck the actual value is written by hand in blue ink on top so you won't have to take it out and read the printed value on the bottom (or for that matter measure it according to the procedures outlined in most of the OTHER books except the later ones which have the necessity to measure the IOP value removed). You can't do the full service without a laser power meter, so don't follow the "initial setting" part in the service manual unless you have one. Take a look and see if there's anything in or on the optical pickup that shouldn't be. Usually cleaning will do nothing and causes more problems than it solves, unless there's so much dust around that the laser beam is seriously interfered with. If everything is unchanged (develop a little routine for yourself with at least 2 disks, one that works and one that doesn't) try increasing IOP value (IOP write)by the smallest division it will allow you to (0.1mA). If that fails try the other direction instead. This means you remember the initial value (IOP read) by writing it down on a piece of paper If you see improvement in one direction or the other try up to 3 more clicks in that direction only. But you have to decide exactly whether it's getting better or worse using the criteria i mentioned (vibration, C13 etc). DO NOT ATTEMPT TO WRITE ANYTHING AT ALL for the moment. No track divisions, no recording, nothing. The disk you produce will simply confuse the picture. The two disks (one that works and one that doesn't) are your best hope. Once you record a disk with an out of alignment pickup you are basically screwed and have to start from scratch. There is on some units a stray light adjustment which compensates for the difference between transparent and opaque disks (and the reflectivity of the minidisk itself) but I think on these late decks that's all automatic. I wouldn't use it much until you have solved this - it will only get worse. Hope this helps ============== Oh yes, I forgot. Before you do much else, get into the test mode (not service mode) and write down as much info as you can about any errors that happened in the past that it will tell you about. Certain things will reset this information, so you need to get it before it gets cleared. This does NOT require any disk to be inserted.

Don't try to make CD-Text via Sonic Stage. For some weird reason it won't show up in the CD-Text capable CD readers. But if you make a disk with Nero (you can get a free or trial version somewhere for sure), it should show up instantly.

It's not, and he is. AFAIK.

That's pretty ancient. My money's on a JE640.Check the specs.

http://www.buyee.jp/item/search?query=lip-4wm You'll need to click the "English" button near top right of the page.

Sure. Let's meet for coffee one of these days (I'm unavailable this week). The biggest resource is the service manual from Sony. The second biggest resource is common sense. Like spotting if the sled doesn't move well, for example. Stephen

Almost anything that interferes with the servo system (MD is all servo-feedback-based). Mechanical, electrical (connections), power (adjustment), you name it. Any good with electronics? Maybe you have to disassemble it, check it out and run the alignment tests. But you really can't do much unless you have at least one other working MD device which you can generate disks with and also test the disk written by your misfunctioning machine.

Followup: the fix has found its way into "Weatherwax", the latest stable released version of VLC, 2.2.0 to be precise. http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-windows.html Once again, I would repeat that this is the ONLY way to play your files for those of you who uploaded to PC and got stranded by Sonic Stage's protection if you failed to run the File Conversion Tool. Stephen (I have tested the 64-bit version as well, and it works).

You MUST decrypt them if you do not want the next system restore or Windows install to wipe everything out. A new copy of Windows is, to SonicStage, like a new PC. True that WAV isnt encrypted. But there are all sorts of advantages in NOT converting everything to WAV, apart from the obvious one, space. For example there is no metadata stored in a WAV file..... what a pain!