NGY

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Thanks PhilippeC, I sent him a mail. (May also I ask for your help in contacting Jonathan and Cu?)

Wow... Amazing, almost a complete list. I can imagine the storage space those occupied. Is there anything still for sale? I am mostly interested in Sony gear.

I have bought this belt for my 640: http://www.ebay.com/itm/231770624890 3.59 Euro including free international shipping. Same belt works in the 440 and the 940 too. Also checked those orthodontic belts on ebay that sfbp suggested, I could have bought a 100 pcs. pack for the price of one "real one", but I didn't have 100 decks :-) .

Something came to my mind though. I have two 330 decks, one of them was inoperable when I bought. It is now fixed and working nicely, but the backup battery, that I desoldered from the main board, as it turned out to be dead, and currently waiting for a replacement (more on this in another post, sometime). I went down and popped a disc in each 330, pushed the power buttons to send them to standby, than a minute later I unplugged them from the AC socket. Upon reconnecting to the power, the good 330 kept the disc inside, the other one without the battery ejected it. Repeat, same. With this, I am not saying this must be the cause for his 940/440 ejecting discs, just wanted to check my memory on the S38 case, and I seem to be not - fully - senile :-) .

It is hardwired to 230 Volts, as far as I can see. Only two wires to the primer side of the transformer, and no switching/setting circuitry on the AC side:

I think I am talking about a different matter here. My point was purely, whether using the 930's DAC and all its analogue part behind would give a better sound (of an MDLP recording made on the 640), than by using the 640's own circuitry - on the same audio output system, amplifier/speakers. At first sight - looking into both decks, and seeing just the "density" - my feeling is that the answer is yes. My application is listening to music in my flat (mostly at moderate volumes), or by using my headphones. So far I have been glad with the audio quality of my system, even if it is not that "audiophile" by certain "standards". No plans for more sophisticated gear just as of now, and if I ever will feel the need for even better sound, I probably would not use MD in that system as the source of audio. True, I had to replace the belts in both of my 640 and 940, not a big deal, indeed a 10 minutes work. I have to check this, cannot remember. Right now I can only take a look at my photos I took when first opened the deck. Will get back on this.

No, I am not :-) . I just noticed he could reproduce the situation based on one single variable, and then it reminded me a similar behavior of a flat battery. If I recall correctly, I saw this on an S38, the deck did not want to operate in timer mode, just ejected the disc upon power up, and I found the battery dead. But since I don't have that unit anymore, cannot go back and justify it. It can definitely be the belt as well, though I am not sure then the symptoms could be reproduced that sharply, just by leaving the deck unplugged for long or for short. He will figure it out soon, hopefully.

Sounds like the backup battery is flat. Either not charged, or dead. You can try this: plug the deck directly into the wall outlet, and keep plugged for 24 hours. Then switch on, adjust some settings in Setup, i.e., Peak Hold to ON, or T.Sync to OFF. Then unplug the deck from the power outlet. After ~30 minutes, plug and switch the unit back on, and check Setup. If it kept the set values, then the battery is OK. If the values set back to default (OFF and ON respectively, for the above), then the battery is dead. Sony MD decks "like" to be always plugged into a live power outlet, in order to keep the backup battery always charged. It happened to me, that the battery died in my rarely used deck I had plugged into the receiver's switched power port, thus it was only charging when I used the MD deck, only for - in terms of charging time - short periods.

Do you get the same confusing results, when powering the receiver up with the power button?

Thanks for you both. I am getting closer to my decision. Honestly, before I began dubbing our LP-s to MD, I had the same idea of buying an RH1, and utilize its linear PCM recording plus PC uploading capabilities. But then I read - here and on ebay too - about the possible potholes of an (ab)used RH1 can lead into, and dropped this path. Sometime in the future I will obtain a proper preamp with optical out and copy the LPs directly onto the computer, for future editing/archiving. But for now, I can live with these 1:1 SP MD copies, and preserve the LPs. One of the options I am considering is to keep my 640 (as a fullsize deck, because I have a PC3 and an S50 too) to record in MDLP in case I needed, and swap the 940 for a 930, then I still can play MDLP recordings on the 640 via the 930's DAC, as bluecrab suggested. Does this make sense? Is there something in the 940 I am missing, that makes the quality of the recording better than on the 640, as they have the same ATRAC chip (and talking about digital audio input)?

Ah... Brief post (thanks definitely), but raises a lot of new questions in my head. Would you mind, if I ask them? I mean, would you mind spending your time answering them :-) . I understand, that the way of usage and personal preferences can make a big difference in evaluating a certain unit over another one. I am open to learn new aspects. And, please forgive my ignorance, if someting asked is well known - the MD world for me stopped pre-MDLP/netMD/HiMD, and seems I am not into those new technologies. The good old SP is good enough for me to get (near) CD quality, squeezing multiple albums onto one disc is not a goal, but the contrary, for - again - "ergonomic" reason, i.e., I am in the process of ripping our couple hundred LPs to MD, and the "one LP - one MD" scheme makes our life easier. It might sound simple, but I like simple and straightforward stuff :-) . Back to the questions: - which functionality do you refer the 940 over 930? To see whether or not those are decision points for me - enable the PS/2 port control - do you mean, like how it is done in the PC-3 and S50 for example? Is it not possible on the 930 for the different control chip? - SP is not as linear a reproduction as ATRAC3/MDLP” - I am not sure I got what you meant on linearity here. (I am trying to find the post you mentioned, without success so far) - copy MDLP recordings to hdd - is it via one of the portable units and Sonic Stage? Thanks again.

I have this dilemma: recently acquired a 940, in great condition, looks hardly ever used. I should say, this is the top for my audiophile needs. My all time favourite (I mean, in my all time foreseeable budget range) is the 930 though, simply for I like better the appearence of the front panel (it is more logical, or "ergonomic" so to speak, than the 940, but it might be subjective). Now, I found a near mint 930, quite expensive, but looks worth the money. My heart would go for the 930, as opposed to the 940. I am looking for personal experiences and/or comparison of the two models, pros and cons - this would help me to decide, to whether or not sell the 940 and go for the 930. (The datasheets I have read, as well as the service manuals, I am fairly familiar with "what's physically inside", so it is not about the specs., but the "look and feel".) For one: I am not much concerned about MDLP, never used, though I have owned MDLP capable equipment since 2000. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

Ha... Interesting. Thanks for checking it for me. I looked into the Service Manuals of all MDLP decks, and the odometers section is there in all. Strange, if the function is not working, why did not they remove the associated part from the manual?

The total recording/playing time odometers in setup appearing with the 330/520 are very useful, to estimate the usage of a given unit. However, I have noticed a weird thing, and wonder if anybody else experienced the same. During past couple of months I acquired several MD decks (most of them at a reasonable price, that is why). The "fleet" now consists of (besides my first 510 from '98 and my PC3 from 2000) a 520, a 530, a 330, a 640, a 940, an S50 and a second PC3. Out of these, both PC3-s, the 640/940 and the S50 show recording/playing odometers standing at 1 hour (and spindle 2h), i.e., no usage at all. Only the 520/530/330 had certain run times. It is weird, as - I bought the first PC3 new, I did use it for many hours, and never reset the odometers - the 640 and the 940 came second hand, both are in very good condition, the seller did not look like an "insider" whom I could imagine would have done a reset - the S50 was found on ebay, seller claimed it has been her father's deck, and she did only a quick check of play - if that was the case, she probably did not go into setup either - the second PC3 was also on ebay, sold as parts or not working (no display), so I don't think the seller could do anything to these settings Can it happen, that these counters reset accidentally (if yes, what is the cause), or that these won't even begin counting? The most annyoing example is my original PC3, that definitely run quite some time, as the others I cannot prove, though it looks very unlikely, that those had been reset intentionally.

Finally, my homebrew laser power meter is put together. It cost $3 worth of surface mount components, a used disc sacrificed for the shell, a piece of pcb, and some other stuff I found in the back of my drawer. Initially I tested it with my digital multimeter hooked on those test terminals, but then I found this neat little five-digit Volt-meter I bought some time ago on ebay, I think it was five bucks or so with free shipping from China. Without much fine tuning, I popped this little probe into all the decks I had at hand, and measured the laser power. From the mV readings and the nominal laser power values I calculated the mV-to-mW multipliers, and I took the average of a unit I trusted the most, a 940. Using this sole multiplier as the "calibration", I recalculated the measured mW figures and compared to the factory recommended range. Most of the other units were nicely within specification, but this 530 in question, that immediately popped out, being near 40% below the necessary values, i.e., 0,55 mW and 4,32 mW versus 0,9 mW and 7,0 mW respectively. Now, it might be that easy, but before changing anything, I want to check the IOP, to see, whether that meets the specs, and set the measured value for further adjustments. For this I will need that rig connecting to the drive, currently waiting for the special connector to arrive. So much for now, I will update the thread as I progress. Some photos attached below, just for fun.

Yes, the Sanwa LP1 (for example) is a great piece of kit, it has a range of 400...1100 nm, and also has a conversion table, to multiply the shown figure as you mentioned, for the given wavelength. I saw a few pieces on ebay at around 200 bucks, that is a great price, if one would use it regularly, but for that money I could buy 4-5 MD decks :-) .

Yes, I should have remembered, that in Vietnam they have their surname first, and first name behind, just like we do overhere. I dropped a PM to Jonathan, also another mail to Cu, but no reply from them. If you could contact Jonathan directly for me (I would also like to ask him to send some close up photos of his Sony LPM, to see the exact positon where actually the photodiode is located, to finalize my DIY LPM design), thanks in advance

Thanks PhilippeC. I already wrote a mail to Pham (referring to one of your posts here, with the same link above, as where I got his email from) about three weeks ago, but no response so far. Will try again. If you are in better contact with him, may you notify him about my inquiry? As for Jonathan, I could not find an email or other contacts to him on his pages, and he has not been here either for quite a long time. Not sure he even reads his PMs here. (Back in the early eighties, at the university I had five class mates from Vietnam, but I have no single contact to any of them - how handy would it be now though.)

Hi PhilippeC, As I see you around here, may I have a question for you? Does your friend in Vietnam still keep/sell Sony MD deck parts? I am looking for a spare OP that fits the 530 (and quite some other modells too), at a friendly price (ebay's 70 bucks plus shipping is far from my friendliness :-), as a complete deck could be purchased for that price). It is for further experiments with (or to repair, ultimately) my not-recording faulty 530. Thank you in any case.

Lacking an LPM, for further tests I decided to make some trial and error settings, though within a ~20% range of the original values, not to risk burning something. I found that increasing the writing power of the laser has no impact until a certain point (at around 10-15% increase), i.e., recording looks going OK, seconds ticking, but the result is a blank disc (if attempted to record on a blank disc). Going slightly above changes the situation: during recording, the display begins counting the seconds, then after a few moments it displays "Retry". Though the result is still no recording made, the retry error should mean something - I tend (or hope ...) to believe, it is only a settings issue and not a broken component, but cannot obviously justify without the LPM. I took a look at the link above (thanks anyway), but this meter is not applicable for my purpose, for a couple of reasons. First, it is only working in the 800...1600 nm wavelength range, at given discrete values (MD lasers work at 780 nm). The measurement range is up to 6 dBm only, that is, slightly below 4 mW (we would need up to 9 mW or so). Last but not least, the problem is the probe. This tester is designed to measure fibre optics' laser power, thus the "probe" is built inside the unit (and cables to test are connected to the meter). I am in the progress of designing and building a low cost probe, that can be attached to a DVM or DMM, and then make a simple mV to mW conversion. Calibration is still a question mark though, but I expect to have some fair results by using an intact, working deck's values. As soon as I have reasonable progress, will publish it here. Besides this, I am about to post some other fixes and mods to other machines I made in the meantime, if that can help others.

Yes, something is not round there. If I understand correctly, there is a single laser diode, that does both writing and reading, the difference is in the applied laser power. Therefore, hopefully, with proper settings, it can write again. Without a laser power meter, I could not yet check it, all I can see is the settings all seem to be in range, i.e., IOP value matches what is on the OP's label, and other laser power settings match proportionally two other units' that I could compare to. It then probaly lies with the control circuitry, that switches between high and low power. Or, worse, it could be, that the laser itself is aged (odometers don't reflect this though) - I saw a similar situation, when a DVD-recorder deck "forgot" recording, ejecting discs with error, though it was still able reading dvd-s. Seems I need to develop a DIY laser power meter, because the generic equipment are very expensive, the Sony gear is very seldom (just missed one on ebay a month ago, it was up for a few minutes only, fixed price 45usd or so ...), to see exactly, what is the laser emission in recording mode, on the surface of the disc. This would help to decide, whether to continue working on this unit, or just scrap it for parts.

A little disappointing day... I could play a few hours with the 530. A 520 was the reference unit, I repeated every measurement on both machines. The OWH signals look alike on both BD-s, both OWH circuitries seem to be working OK. Still, no recording made on the 530. I began pulling my hair out. OWH OK, BD OK, I even swapped spindle motors, still the unit does not write to the disc. It's very late now (actually, getting very early), so I stopped for now, looks I can't see the forest for the trees.