BearBoy

No, it's not an April fool, we appear to be back 🙂 We seemed to run out of bandwidth especially early in March?

Hi @tsfrance. What model of Bravia do you have? Might be worth asking over on AVForums - Sony TV Forum (UK based) or AVS Forum (US based) as if this is a wider issue I am sure others would have flagged it.

Hi @Rossen - welcome to the forum! I'm not a SonicStage user but I don't think it can do what you're trying to do? @sfbp is something of a SonicStage expert and should be able to confirm. Do you have any portable NetMD MiniDisc devices? It is now possible to transfer tracks from a MiniDisc to your PC using Web MiniDisc Pro but it needs to be done from a Sony NetMD portable (or one of the Aiwa clones) as it exploits the "anti shock" memory buffer. As decks don't need this, it's not possible to do it with your MDS-JB980.

This video by "Spare Time Repair" popped up in my YouTube feed this morning. Thought it might be of interest to some people here 🙂

Hi @RomulusXXV. Are you asking about portable recorders or decks? The drive units for the latter are shared among multiple different models (e.g. you can put the drive unit from an MDS-JE480 in an MDS-JE780 or MDS-JB980). I think @kgallen might have produced a list on here at some point.

Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.

According to the User Manual for the MZ-N910:

Thanks for posting the pictures. I love the look of those pro devices and what you've done with the Raspberry Pi looks really interesting. Can you use that to control what it plays as well as showing that it is playing? I know @kgallen has a number of the pro Sony decks (the rack mount ones). They also have RS232 serial ports on the back. I wonder if they could connect up in the same way? Anyway, should probably save the questions for your new thread. In battery related news, my gumstick kept going until 10.30pm last night, when I finally turned it off. I got another 2 hours or so out of it this morning before it finally gave up the ghost for good. I think in total I got about 14-15 hours out of it, although for around half of that it was displaying the low battery indicator. When I tested the voltage at the end it was 1.228V but I couldn't coax it into playing any more.

I've only just picked up on this. Would be interesting to hear a bit more about that (and see some pictures) if you ever get the time.

Apologies if the running commentary on my battery life is a bit tedious 🥱 Just wanted to record the results somewhere and this seemed as good a place as any. It's now been running for over two hours since the battery supposedly died. Still showing low battery. I tested the voltage using the AA battery case connectors and it's reading as 1.212V. I mentioned earlier that I'd had mixed results with some of my Vapex gumstick batteries. I've found one that is only registering 0.975V even after being charged with my USB charger. Looks like that one is destined for the recycling unless anyone knows whether Ni-MH batteries can be revived? I've found a couple of things suggesting you can bring a battery with 0V back to life by connecting it up to a working one (positive to positive, negative to negative) but not sure whether the same would work for one that's like mine.

About 15-20 minutes after I last posted, the battery gave out. I removed it and re-inserted and it's being playing for about another 30 minutes so far. Still showing low battery.

It's been going for over seven and a half hours so far. The battery indicator is flashing to indicate low battery (has been for maybe 30 minutes or more - didn't notice when it started) but shows no sign of stopping just yet. The manual suggests a playback time of 31 hours with a gumstick battery (with power save mode engaged, which I haven't). I don't think it'll keep going that long...

🤣 I did have a purge of my saved searches a while back but I could probably do with cutting it back further 🙂

They're in the actual saved search in the app, not separate "you might also be interested in" items. They often are higher up the list than the items the search was actually for too. I did always get a lot of crossover with the JB9XX QS decks but it seems to have gone a bit haywire in the last week. Maybe I'll delete my saved searches and start again. See if that makes any difference.

I bought one of the USB chargers that comes with two Doublepow batteries and they seem pretty decent. I've been playing my MZ-N910 for about two hours this morning and the battery is still showing as full on the player's display. I'll leave it running and see how long it lasts. I have had mixed results with gumstick batteries tbh. A couple of Vapex ones I had didn't hold much of a charge but I'd lost track of which ones I'd purchased new and which had come bundled with players I'd bought so couldn't be sure how old they were/how they'd been treated. I've also got a Jinmasi one, which seems fine. I have had instances where the player indicates the battery is dying only to subsequently show it as having plenty of charge left when you take it out and reinsert. Not sure if this is an issue with the battery or the player though. What I have found is that they don't always charge particularly well inside players. They never seem to charge long enough to get fully charged. A standalone charger does seem more effective in my experience.