BearBoy

🤯🤦‍♂️ Good to hear you're making progress and the drive etc are (now) sound.

Good luck with the repair @M1JWR! If you get a chance, take a few photos as you go. Might help others with similar issues in the future.

Supposedly NoS spares for Sony decks sometimes appear on Ali Express (I've seen laser assemblies, drive units etc). If you know the relevant part number it might be worth taking a look there? I think @kgallen has bought some bits from there in the past. Otherwise you'd probably have to cannibalise the part you need from a non-functioning MDS-JB980, although even the broken ones seem to cost a lot these days... I'm guessing you'd need one from an MDS-JB980 and it would differ from the ones in the 780 and 480 (i.e. not a direct swap like the MDM-7S1A drive units are)?

Hi @Mr. Milchgraf - welcome to the forum. I've got no direct experience of the MDS-JE510 (I do have the earlier MDS-JE500, which I think is very similar, but the eject mechanism has, so far, been fine). There are a couple of older threads here relating to eject issues with the 510. Not sure if any of them offer any possible things to try?

Is it worth reseating the ribbon cables, if you've not done so already? Doesn't sound like the usual symptoms for something amiss with the cables but probably worth a try.

I've been wondering where I knew that guy from as he looked familiar. Was even wondering if it was someone I actually knew before I finally twigged 🤦‍♂️ One of the little pleasures the format brings 😀

I made a template for the MDW80T slipcases. It fits well enough but the sort of frosted finish on the cases means that the inlay doesn't show through terribly well, at least not with the test one I made. Might need to experiment with different colours/fonts a bit and see if I can make it more legible.

I had a little play about in Microsoft Publisher and have managed to pull together a template for jewel case inlays using the measurements from https://www.bandcds.co.uk/minidisc/minidisc-duplication-and-production/ Might try to make an insert to go in the MDW80T slipcases next.

So a few years back I bought a load of the mini jewel cases and started to use a free template that was online (www.minidisccover.com). Unfortunately I'd only made a small number when they started charging a fee to access the template (I think it was something like £50 for 6 months) and I haven't really found a suitable alternative since. I'm not really up to speed with design applications etc so don't really know the best way of creating one of my own. Anyway, here's one I did whilst the site was still free:

Nice work! Although it reminds me I have a load of discs I need to sort out labels/inlays for 🙁

I've not yet tried it myself but it looks like gapless SP over NetMD is now possible using NetMD Wizard: The app can be downloaded here: https://github.com/Jo2003/cd2netmd_gui/releases Might be worth a try @Alfred Stuckmann?

So that's where all the MZ-RH1s went 🤣 How are the displays holding up on yours?

Hi @migeror, welcome to the forum! Lovely deck and you have the matching blanks 🙂

Is your PX7 displaying the same symptoms, @sfbp?

I was going to suggest it might be the belt when I saw your first post. Same thing happened to one of my Sony CD players. Glad you've got it sorted 👍

😄 I don't mind opening MDW80Ts as I have quite a few of them, they're still readily available new (as an aside, someone over on the MiniDisc Discord server e-mailed Sony and got confirmation that they are still actually manufacturing the MDW80T, not just clearing existing stock, which I thought was great 🙂) and they're individually wrapped. I get cold sweats just thinking about breaking open a block of Biancas or some of my older discs though 🤣 Bit daft when I think about it as they're not really in that short supply. I dread to think about @Richard and all his super rare discs though. I don't think I could bring myself to unwrap any of them...

Hello @Daniel Madrazo de Juan - welcome to the forum! Does your DHC-MD373 play discs recorded on the MZ-NH1 without using Web MiniDisc? e.g. recorded using the optical/line in? Do the Web MiniDisc recordings play back okay on the MZ-NH1?

@asivery has just posted a whole host of updates for Web MiniDisc Pro over on the r/minidisc Reddit, including Hi-MD support: Link:

Good to see you're keeping these old machines working and in circulation, @M1JWR. I've been using the MDS-JE500 this week and I think it's probably just a case of the older style mechanism not being quite so slick as my MDM7 decks, all of which have had belt replacements fairly recently. One pleasant consequence of using the JE500 is that I've had to dig out some of my older MDs to listen to as most of my more recent recordings have been done in LP2. It's been nice listening to a few things, especially old "mixtapes", that I hadn't heard in a while.

Thanks for the information @Michael Stieb. Do you know if that Gerri Li is the guy who's often on the r/minidisc Reddit as gerry88inHongKong? I bought something from him a while back and had a good experience.

I've not bought any more discs since our last little box of MDW80Ts from Amazon.jp back in February. Although I did notice they're back in stock for UK delivery again 😂 I did pick up another MZ-R909 a month or so back as the dodgy jog dial on my silver one was continuing to annoy me. So I now have three of those 🤦‍♂️ Oh, and I got an MZ-E720 back in April, which I posted a photo of somewhere. Been doing more recording/playing than eBay hunting, which is probably a good thing...

It's not like I need to really shove the disc in, or use a hammer 😆, but there is noticeably more resistance. I'll plumb the audio back in to my office system and give it a go for a few days and see if anything changes. I am quite possibly over thinking this though 🤔 Haha. I think I've long lost track of how many (and which) decks you have. I knew you had a couple of MDS-JE5XXs but wasn't sure which ones. Your profile doesn't mention the 940 or 770 so you must have picked up some more since you last updated it?

I turned on my Sony MDS-JE500 (my original deck bought way back in 1997) today for the the first time in a year or two and the eject mechanism seems to be more "laboured" in comparison to my other decks. I know the later decks (MDS-JB940 & MDS-JB980) use a different belt-based system, and so maybe are not directly comparable, but the MDS-JE500 is noticeably slower and requires more pressure to trigger the deck to pull the disc in. I can't remember if it was always like that and I've just got used to the later decks or whether something is seizing up inside, possibly due to lack of use or just age. Does anyone have a deck with the earlier MDM-3 / MDM-5 mechanism that they're able to compare it to a later deck with an MDM-7 mechanism? Not sure if I might need to lubricate something or just accept that's how it always operated.

It seemed to go a bit wonky, for a few of us at least, about 19:00 ish (UK time) on Wednesday. We were getting diverted to a different site when trying to access the forum. @sfbp reached out to @Christopher, who got it sorted by the following morning. I was still having a few issues but they seem to have all cleared up now. Probably a lingering cache or something issue my end.

Seems like we had a weird blip yesterday. Anyone else still having issues today? Seems a bit hit and miss whether I get into the site or diverted to some weird "sponsor" page. Have tried clearing cache etc but it's still intermittently happening (this is across multiple devices and browsers).