kgallen

Glad your 909 is working (I don’t want to talk about mine…). I’ve only got an MDS-JE770 that supports this group thing and whilst it’s in my ‘active’ stack it’s not a machine I generally use (normally I use the MDS-JB940 I got from @M1JWR or the MDS-E12 that’s on my office desk under the laptop). So I’ve never got into using the group function - but I know from your posts that it’s something you use quite a bit! Nothing new going on my side but I do use my MZ-R700 at work most days (it’s still trouping on after all these years) and the machines I mention above.

This is not the best photo example I’ve seen but the machine above the unit with lots of green buttons is an MDS-E12. https://www.standard.co.uk/hp/front/no-tears-says-terry-but-the-emotion-shows-as-listeners-wake-up-to-life-after-wogan-6804454.html When MDS-E12 get listed on eBay in the UK they’ll often say ‘ex-BBC’. In the rack below the two 2U CD players above the green unit.

There are some photos of Terry Wogan in the radio studio where you can see MDS-E12 rack mount units in a rack of kit in the background. Those machines first came out 2001 timeframe. As you say jingles, programme adverts and possibly even the music that played when the fire alarm went off and they all had to vacate the studio 😆 The boxy units like above I think were a drop-in replacement for the continuous loop cart machines. The overall shape and layout of the front panel on those Denon’s looks very much like the cart machines. So it was almost certainly a deliberate decision to keep the layout and operation familiar for DJs. Later on the machines like the MDS-E12 were probably triggered remotely by commands from the studio mixing console or possibly even from the control room. The MDS-E12 has a few remote control options as well as the balanced analogue audio I/O that is favoured in pro-audio setups.

UK radio DJ Johnnie Walker has died at 79. He was still broadcasting live on Radio 2 until 2 months ago. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c728nxnx03eo Note the Denon DN-981F and DN-990R MD machines in the background of the photo, which based on the machines is probably from the mid-late 1990's.

Hi, Plenty of products that already do that, for example this is really cheap: https://www.behringer.com/product.html?modelCode=0805-AAG USB to toslink is non-trivial so just buy an off the shelf module and integrate that.

Good question @MarkSmith. Docs on the wiki might help you out: https://www.minidisc.wiki/equipment/sony/portable/mz-rh710 A quick peruse suggests it supports MP3 tracks. MP3 recording is listed under a SonicStage section so maybe you have to use SS?

Most likely reason is the disc you’re playing is in LP2 or LP4 format which the 500 doesn’t support. Are there disc titles, do they say LP: ? Take a disc and try and record onto it using the 500 and see if that plays back.

Could it be a NetMD disc? I understand those tracks can cause issues on pre-NetMD machines. Can you try a fresh disc and see if you have the same editing issues?

@ST43 If you prefer a video, Techmoan did your exact machine:

Load/eject belt. For repair, see: https://www.minidisc.wiki/guides/repair/e12-belt

Hmmm, this is where the pain starts I'm afraid. My first suggestion is to remove and reinsert any ribbon cables to the drive at both ends. I've had oxidation issues with these in the past. After that, we're going to struggle unless you've got an LPM to check the laser. However, I would encourage you to *not* start pulling the machine apart in general. If we can't find the simple problem, then any complex one is going to be too deep for us and with pulling about, the machine will just deteriorate to the point it's definitely just a pile of junk.

I believe the E11 is based on the MDS-JE520 which uses an MDM-5A series drive. This drive is all gears, it doesn’t have a load belt. I could be mistaken. Both a user and service manual are listed on the wiki: https://www.minidisc.wiki/equipment/sony/pro/mds-e11 …However, unusually for Sony, the SM doesn’t have schematics or mechanical exploded diagrams for the drive mech. The MDS-E58 uses the same KMK260 drive. But the SM for that machine has no schematics at all and no further drive details. Reference to the 520 schematics is made, however that machine uses the MDM-5A drive as previously noted. The 17 x 0.7mm belt is specific to the MDM-7 family of drives (2000/2003 timeframe). The E10/E12 use the MDM-7SC variant.

Too many! But if folk are’t gonna buy the spares and repairs, why let them go to waste! It doesn’t say but these are often ex-BBC. There was an asset label on the front that was a bu**er to remove. Immaculate inside, just needed a belt and external clean up. The bezel around the power switch was detached so I had to disassemble the front panel to sort that out. 😃

Then when I got home there was this new find to fix and service. Working just fine now with a new load belt and a damn good clean and de-label! No I don’t know why either… it was spares or repairs at a good price! …and it’s the later ‘Pro’ (with SCMS programmability), which you only find out about when you turn it on ("MDS-E12 PRO") - there are no labels or other indications which indicate it's a later model with the updated firmware.

This week we went to Cambridge (UK). The Centre for Computing History remembers minidisc briefly…