kgallen

Surely plastic shutters are blunt ones. Sorry... I'll get my coat... :-D

As this is a Hi-MD machine are we in to any Hi-MD disc compatibility or formatting issues I've seen mentioned on other threads? Is there anything telling about a "disc with a plastic shutter" - all of my normal (non Hi-MD discs) have metal shutters - MO and CD type. I wouldn't know, but do Hi-MD disc have plastic shutters?

You’ve been busy! That’s some good debug and repair you’ve done on that set of decks. All brought back from the dead- good news!

Yep if you can get a batch of PCBs made I'm up for one or two. Even the blank PCB will do me if easier for you. I can just about solder 1mm pitch SMD. But you won't be doing it for free, I'll pay the dues gladly. Kevin

I have one of these with the intention of removing one socket and adding some test pins. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1-0mm-Pitch-7Pin-to-7P-Extension-Connector-Aapter-for-FFC-FPC-Cable-Extend-ZIP/362650010017?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649 There are breakout boards available but they only seem to come in the even pin-count versions. I have an 8P version with the thought of making it work with the 7P FFC, but there is a risk of me shorting two cores and damaging the machine so I'm not convinced by that approach. At some point I need to set up the drive in my working E10 (motherboard taken from another E10 unit) so I need to get the 'ole LPM out and make an IOP board...

The 480 is likely to be the most affordable, but the 4xx series overall are heavily cost-reduced machines, built to a price to get MDLP and minidisc back into the mass market in the early 2000's. Very little I/O, no headphone jack, minimal buttons, basic display. 7xx and 9xx series have more features but eBay sellers want silly money. So if you're dabbling and you just want "a machine" then the 480 (or 440 without Type-S) will be fine. If you want something a bit more elegant if you have a nice hi-fi setup and deeper pockets then look further up the range. YMMV. 440 and 470 look like the same technical specs to me. The 440 case style is similar to the 520/530. The 470 (and 480) is the "E-line" case design. To review the terminology - Type-R gives "the best" SP *recording* but doesn't help MDLP. Type-S gives "the best" MDLP *playback* but doesn't affect recording or do anything for SP. I think the only Type-S decks are the x80 series. Type-R started with the MDS-JE530 deck which you have, which is an SP-only machine as you know. Regards, Kevin ETA - I'm with Stephen, the 640 looks a beauty. What about this one for less money than that 480 and it has the remote: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Sony-MDS-JE640-Black-High-End-Minidisc-Deck-Minidisc-Longplay/184237759042?hash=item2ae56d1a42:g:ZSUAAOSwAppebTw-

Hi Parkie, We're assuming a fully functional unit that's been asleep for a long time. Just want to give it the best chance of coming out of hibernation before we start pulling the poor thing about. Also I would work the clamshell open and closed with a disc being inserted. There is a small switch that detects this happening and wakes up the units, so if we give this a bit of movement we might see some life. Kevin

Give it some power for a while with a disc in.

Wow that’s some kit! Dont know the answer to your question but at some point I will endeavour to have a Google and see what I can find. Otherwise your initial proposition seems reasonable! The 801 with those remotes must be the single most expensive setup in the world for a one disk deck (with buffer expansion) plus controllers!

Indeed it was - well a mixture of base 12 and base 20 too? (You have a couple of years on me, but not many!). And clocks are essentially base 60 (although we use decimal numbers to count the seconds/minutes/hours).

Nah, come on you're not that daft. You've found your way through this MD stuff. Give it a go, write some numbers down. Choose something whacky like base 7 and count 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,20,...

So to round off, the error count reached 0xff. All that means is Sony implemented an 8-bit binary counter in which to count errors. That counter counts from 0 and when it gets to %1111_1111 in binary (i.e. all 8 bits have got to 1), we have counted to 0xff or 255 decimal. When they get there, they just hold that maximum count. Who cares if you've had more than 255 errors. If you've had 255 errors then investigation is needed - no value in counting to some higher number! So they give you an error count that can go to 255 but they also store the last 10 (or maybe first 10!) diagnostics codes (the Exx codes) so the Service Tech can judge if there is some dominant issue. Depending on what @NGY thinks, maybe for some machines we should reset the error record and then use the machine and thus get a fresh report of what the error conditions are the deck is seeing, rather than all of that historical stuff, some of which could be error codes captured years ago and are not necessarily related to the current condition or symptoms of our machine.

MD decks are computers at heart and as such use binary counting in their digital electronics, 0=low voltage 1=high voltage (well 5V or 3.3V). With 8 binary digits (bits) you can count from 0 to 255 in the same way as with decimal with say 3 digits you can count to 999. Hexadecimal (base 16) is an easier way for humans to work with binary numbers because writing out strings of 0s and 1s is tedious and error prone. So instead of writing binary we often use hexadecimal. In decimal, we have 10 "symbols" we use to make any number: 0,1,2,3...,9. When we run out (i.e. we get to 9), we increment the next column along (the 10's column). So the number ten in decimal is one-ten plus no-units, so we write 10. So when we count up 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9, then we go 10 then 11,12,etc until we get to 19 then we count 20 (two tens plus no units). All number bases work the same way. Hexadecimal is base 16, so we need 16 "symbols" to count with. We already have 0,1,2...9 we can use for the same purpose as in decimal, but we need 6 more, so we use the letters a,b,c,d,e,f. So in hexadecimal, we count 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,a,b,c,d,e,f but then, as in decimal we've run out of symbols so we increment the next column along, and write 10. But this is not ten as in decimal. The number 10 in hex (we write 0x in front usually so we know it's hex, so we write 0x10). Well 0x10 means one-sixteen plus no units, or sixteen in decimal. So then we just count units again as we do in decimal, so 0x11, 0x12, ... 0x19, 0x1a, 0x1b, ... 0x1f, then as with decimal we roll again and get to 0x20. This is two-sixteens plus no-units, so 0x20 (twenty hex) is 32 decimal. Keep going and when you get to 0xff you have "f"-sixteens plus "f" units. f in hex is 15 decimal, so we have 15-sixteens plus 15 which is 255 decimal. Hexadecimal is useful for binary because you can take 4-bit chunks of binary and convert to one hex digit. Computers tend to be "8-bit" or "16-bit" or "32-bit" etc, so the numbers involved can be written using 2, 4, or 8 hex digits respectively. Converting binary to decimal is a pain which is why hexadecimal (or octal - base 8) is used commonly in computing and digital electronics. As humans we're naturally tied up with the decimal system, but there is nothing special about decimal (or base 10). You can have a number system of any base. In decimal the "columns" are the ones, the tens, the hundreds, the thousands etc. They are ten-to-the-power numbers. In hexadecimal the "columns" are the ones, the sixteens, the 256's, the 4096's etc. They are sixteen-to-the-power numbers. In binary, the "columns" are the ones, the twos, the fours, the eights etc. They are two-to-the-power numbers. So in binary, 1011 (going R to L) is one plus two (no four) plus eight, or 11 (eleven) in decimal, or b in hexadecimal. Hope that helps :-)

Those "E" error codes only relate to the Error History which is a chronological list of the last 10 abnormal conditions that the deck detected.

Total Error = ff ff is not a code, it's a count. It's the number 255. Your homework is to tell me how ff = 255 :-)

Indeed! :-D

I'm lost (or I missed part of the conversation!). What are you going to do with the SPDIF? There is no SPDIF on the Scarlett, so are you going to feed it direct to your Mac/Belkin?

They've just got some shaping filters in there to make it sound a bit like one of their fancy mic preamps. Think "UK Tuned" labels on Sony Minidisc players. Just a tweak to the frequency response characterictics of the post-DAC low pass filter.

( @BearBoy - I think we've blown it. Stephen's gone to lay down in a darkened room...)

Regarding the mic, what have you got? You will be safe with the phantom if you have a balanced XLR cable (2 cores plus screen) and either a dynamic mic (like a Shure SM58) or a condenser mic (line a Sennheiser E614). For a dynamic mic (basically a loudspeaker in reverse), phantom=off, for a condenser, phantom=on. (Not suggesting you have either of these mics, just pointing at something you can find a picture of).

USB2.0 and line left and right according to the manual, so no.

Yea ok so that jack on the front is TRS balanced and there is only one channel on that box so if your MD material has any stereo material then you're going to need to merge them, which will take a couple of resistors and a bit of faffing about. Otherwise you will need that 3.5mm TRS jack (MD end) to 2x 6.35mm TS jacks and just plug one of them into the Scarlett and you'll have to pick the left or right channel to work with...

Is there anything on the back or is the input that 6.35mm jack on the front? If it can support a "real" microphone then make sure that 48V phantom power is never turned on otherwise poof will go your MD... (probably phantom power is only on the XLR though, you should be safe with TRS jacks...) I'll try and dig out some kind of manual so I can qualify my rash statements!

Either: 3.5mm TRS (MD end) to 2x 6.25mm TS jack plug (mixer end) Or if your mixer has them: Phono (RCA) inputs using a 3.5mm TRS to 2xRCA plug The mixer probably has "balanced" jack inputs which use TRS. Using a "mono" TS jack plug makes the input "unbalanced". The historical reason for TRS jacks was for balanced connections (Hot,Cold,Shield) versus TS jacks for unbalanced (Hot,Gnd) connections. The TRS format got "stolen" for stereo (unbalanced) connections. The TS "unbalanced" jack can be plugged into a TRS "balanced" input socket. Since the ring is the Cold connection, Cold gets shorted to Shield which results in an unbalanced connection. If your portable is battery powered or using a Sony Class2 (no earth) PSU then there is no chance of a (mains) earth loop between MD and mixer. After that you're into a "Direct Inject" (DI) box but you don't want to go there for this setup. The "weird sound" is due to phase cancellation - I bet you lose most of the "centre field" of the stereo image, which is usually the vocals. Post a front-on picture of your mixer then I can advise more directly.

These codes from the "Error History" are documented in the Service Manual. May not be of use to you immediately but they may be of interest in conjunction with reading other parts of the SM. UTOC - User Table Of Contents - the area of the disc that holds track information - positions (addresses) on the disc, titles and other track-specific information PTOC - An area of the TOC that is created when the disc is manufactured and cannot be changed, holding information like the length of the disc (60/74/80 mins) Address - the entire length of the recordable track is manufactured with a "wobble" in the pregroove that encodes an address (number) that the deck reads to work out where it is on the disc See the Minidisc Tutorial. Get some of these on occasion is to be expected. Sometime the deck has to "retry" - bad spot on a disc or the deck got knocked for example.