kgallen

If you mean the drive in a deck then the same drive is usually used in the same generation of deck. Look at the last two digits per the examples from @BearBoy. But you can’t swap between generations e.g. you can’t put a drive from a 530 into a 520. The drive has the ATRAC chip on it and these chips evolved over the years as the ATRAC coded was revised. Also some machines of the same generation have a variant of the drive which makes them incompatible. For example the ‘pro’ machine MDS-E10 has an MDM7SC drive in it and you can’t swap that for a consumer MDM7A from e.g. an MDS-JE440. Similarly the MXD-D4 high speed dubber uses an MDM7AX2 which supports the high speed dubbing. Again you can’t drop in a ‘vanilla’ MDM7A drive from a 440. If you give a list of your machines we can be more specific on what options you have.

Too many good questions @sfbp but I can’t answer them now other than agree that a higher voltage sidecar cell can couple easily to a lower voltage gumstick. From what I remember of the schematic there is just a low value resistor between them.

Looking at the schematics you should be fine with an NiMH AA or an alkaline AA in the sidecar. All supplies end up at a couple of fancy power supply chips containing boost regulators. I can't find any proper datasheets for the chips but they look like they are there for handling cells of this type and for charging an NiMH gumstick (but not an NiMH in the sidecar). Probably in service mode those voltages that are a little out of spec need tweaking - the power supply chips look like they have some programmability so you can probably adjust them in service mode (need to recheck the SM!).

Hi, I'm very impressed by the extensive commentary from @sfbp (I didn't know you had all this in you Stephen!) and the measurements and observations by @valentinc!!! I'm not sure if I can add much at this point. I will have to download the schematics and take a look at Stephen's question. I do agree that NiMH has a lower cell voltage than alkaline although without digging in I don't know what is the tolerable range of input voltages for the 910. It's going to have a boost converter in there to provide a higher initial voltage for further regulation and I would hope that would support down to 1.1V or better 1.0V. That the NiMH has a longer plateau voltage around 1.2V should be workable if the boost is as I hope. Here are a couple of datasheets for NiMH and alkaline. They are a little generic but might be interesting: https://data.energizer.com/pdfs/alkaline_appman.pdf https://data.energizer.com/pdfs/nickelmetalhydride_appman.pdf

... and stop there, you've got enough machines already! 😄 (Only kidding, seems I have Saved Searches of a similar ilk too. I'm not sure why, it's not a good thing...)

Are they actually from the search or under a subtle grey partition saying something like ‘similar items you might be interested in’? My 980 search always contained mostly 920,930,940 machines.

@BearBoy Originally I was aiming to add optical out for both the CD and MD sections of an MXD-D4 combo deck. Your request was for the coaxial output and I fancied the challenge! 😀

No, you’re right, seems not. I messed about a bit creating Sony accounts in JP and UK and got nowhere!

You mean we could have bought MDW80T direct from Sony for 2GBP each? https://pur.store.sony.jp/rec-media/products/MDW80T/MDW80T_purchase/

😆 ’spreadsheet’ - and I thought I was a disc nutter 🤣

Yea well I need to be sending you one even if you blutac it to the wall. It was all your fault 😁😆

We’ve got enough stock haven’t we? Please tell me we have - or that you just pressed ‘go’ on Amazon Japan 🤭😆

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. 😃